I 



CHRIST IN WO 
AND WORK 



MMTfH SUMMERBELL 




Class 

Book 

CopyiightN^_ 



CQEXRICHT DEPOSIC 



CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 



Christ in Word 
and Work 



BY 



MARTYN SUMMERBELL 

President of Palmer Institute-Starkey Seminary 
Vice-President of Defiance College 



Author of 

"Special Services for Ministers*', "Religion in College Life* 

"Faith for the College Man**, "Manhood in 

Its American Type**, "Christian 

Home Training**, etc. 



The Antioch Press 

Dayton, Ohio 

1920 



v^ 



dTzdj 



COPYRIGHT, 1920 
BY MARTYN SUMMERBELL 



JUN-1 1920 
©CI.A570180 



FOREWORD 

IN the preparation of this modest book on 
''Christ in Word and Work'' some thought has 
been had of the young Christian, and of the 
young preacher also, as they undertake their con- 
secrated work for the Master. No claim is made 
for a complete portraiture of that wonderful life, 
which is still the inspiration and hope of the 
world. Some effort has been made to clear away 
misconceptions of the truth and to point out 
special relations that bear upon the Christian life 
of this age. If some heart is induced to study the 
Christ more deeply and to enter upon His work 
with more loyal devotion, the writer's aim will 
have been accomplished. 

The Author. 

Lakemont, New York, August 11, 1919. 



CONTENTS 



I. Premonitions of the Advent. 

II. The Covenant Bearer. 

III. The Prime Revelation. 

IV. Celestial Compassion. 

V. Christ's Novel Way with Sinners. 

VI. The Peacemaker. 

VII. The Uplifted Veil. 

VIII. The Spiritual Presence. 

IX. The Supreme Tragedy. 

X. Headship in the Church. 

XI. The King of Kings. 

XII. Christ's Demand on this Age. 



PREMONITIONS OF THE ADVENT 



I. 

PREMONITIONS OF THE ADVENT 

IT is doubtful if our age has the right estimate 
of the moral and intellectual darkness which 
beclouded the ancient world. From the cradle 
we have enjoyed the blessing of the Christian 
faith. Its glorious truths have been our meat and 
drink from our earliest recollection, so that we 
have been living in the consciousness of the divine 
protection and love, in an atmosphere charged 
with Gospel truth and honor, which has given a 
high standard for all human relationships ; and in 
a firm assurance of the immortal life, so that it is 
difficult for us to conceive that others have ever 
been denied these splendid privileges. 

But whoever reads the chronicles and the dra- 
matic and other literature which was current in 
the period of the Caesars, provided he has not 
read it with his eyes closed, will perceive that 
whatever religious trust might have existed pre- 
viously, it was either dead or was about to expire. 
The gods of the fathers were discredited in every 
city, their priests were either lampooned openly or 
secretly derided, and their temples everywhere 
were falling into neglect. Far and wide the leaders 
of thought were becoming atheistical, denying 
outright that any god was ruling in the world, or 
else standing passively aloof from religious obli- 
gations. When they happened to participate in 



12 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

some religious ceremonial, it was in the pose of 
languid concession to popular tradition, or of com- 
pliance with a social usage which it would be impol- 
itic to disregard ; although as a source of spiritual 
improvement they gave it no confidence whatever. 
That was a sad world indeed, the world of Athens, 
Alexandria, and Rome ; a world in which human 
passions ran riot and void of any competent 
restraint ; a world from which the trust of man in 
his brother had perished; a world which offered 
no real security, and nothing which could arouse 
a hearty desire for any hereafter. 

Amid this universal darkness which prevailed 
throughout the pagan nations, the only light that 
appeared up to the coming of Jesus was presented 
in the religion of the Jews. The Hebrew race 
possessed a revelation of the True God, given 
through the patriarchs and prophets. Their tem- 
ple crowned the slopes of Zion, standing there as 
a memorial of the one Living and True God, and 
of His watchful providence over His children. 

But when we examine the religion of the Jew in 
this period, we find that it had suffered a serious 
lapse from the force and purity which it displayed 
in a former day. Its history proved that it had 
a sure foundation in the original divine revelation, 
and it still held in jealous veneration the Holy 
Books that had been passed on through the gen- 
erations. But far from holding faithful to its 
past record, it had degenerated from a living faith 
to a careless conformity to custom; and its cere- 
monies were become^ less the expression of a con- 
scious dependence on God, than the punctilious 
observance of an ornate ritual. Examples there 



PREMONITIONS OF THE ADVENT 13 

still were of pious devotion, such as one observes 
in Mary, the bride of Joseph; in Zacharias and 
Elizabeth ; and in the holy Simeon who ministered 
at the altar: but taking the Jewish people as a 
whole, religiously speaking, they were on the 
worldly plane; worshipping like saints in syna- 
gogue and temple on the Holy Days, but conduct- 
ing themselves for the rest of the week like ordi- 
nary sinners, so that their religion in effect was 
a pretentious sham. How deplorable their state 
we may learn from the reproof of Jesus, when He 
said, ''Ye hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of 
you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me 
with their mouth, and honor eth me with their lips: 
hut their heart is far from me'' (Matt. 15 : 8) . And 
yet, because they possessed some remnant of 
religious feeling, and owned a history that was 
fragrant with real devotion, the Gospel was 
delivered first to Israel, and so through the Chosen 
People to the great world without. Peter addressed 
the first of his epistles to the strangers scattered 
abroad throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, 
Asia, and Bythinia: that is, to the Jews of the 
Dispersion; and his second epistle was dedicated 
to the same hearers, some of whom, so he says, 
had already "attained like precious faith with 
us:" and it was these same Jews, now become 
Christians, whom he was seeking to confirm in the 
faith. 

How was it possible to bring Jews in that first 
century, men full of pride in their ancient lineage 
and in the law which they had received through 
Moses, to acceptance of this new Gospel? All 
their training was opposed to the new teaching, 



14 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

all their prejudices inclined them to hold fast to 
the old worship, and besides that they knew well 
the hatred their chief priests and rabbis had 
nursed against Jesus, and how their mad rage 
had compassed His death upon the cross. But 
Peter supplied the bridge that connected the Law 
and the Gospel. It was the same which he pre- 
sented to the Jews on the Day of Pentecost, when 
he declared to them that the Jesus whom they had 
crucified was the veritable Messiah, for whom 
every Jewish household had been so long in 
anxious expectation. In the first chapter of his 
second epistle he opens up for them a page from 
his personal experience. He recalls for their 
benefit that remarkable interview with Jesus on 
the mountain, when he in company with James 
and John had seen the Lord transfigured; when 
the countenance and even the raiment of the Mas- 
ter were all aglow from the outshining of His 
divinity; and when Moses and Elijah, who had 
come from the heavenly world, conversed with the 
liOrd familiarly concerning the things that shortly 
must come to pass. 

This incident, which connected these ancient 
worthies with Jesus, their interest in Jesus, of 
Moses the Lawgiver and Elijah the chief of the 
older prophets, constituted a living tie between the 
past and the present; a confirmation of Christ's 
divine power and mission so definite and so cir- 
cumstantial, that the more sincere a Jew might be, 
the more certainly he would be forced to accept 
the testimony. 

But, beside the reference to this striking inci- 
dent, Peter strengthens his position by calling 



PREMONITIONS OF THE ADVENT 15 

attention to premonitions of the advent which 
appear in the Old Testament Scriptures. These he 
groups together under the expression, "a more 
sure word of prophecy/' Though a conscientious 
Jew might hesitate to accept Peter's personal wit- 
ness, how could he object when he listens to his 
own prophets prophesying of Jesus, and the life 
and character of Jesus fulfil all the conditions of 
the prophecy? The concurrence of these ancient 
premonitions, of the long standing and well 
authenticated predictions, with the actual career 
of Christ was the highest evidence that could be 
presented to an intelligent mind, and because they 
had accepted that evidence, thousands of Jews had 
yielded to the truth and had enlisted with the 
followers of Jesus. 

If the premonitions of the Advent, which occur 
in the Old Testament, were effective in winning 
disciples and so establishing them in the truth in 
that first century, they should be useful in our own 
day in fortifying our conceptions of God's work- 
ings with His people, and in enabling us to realize 
the rank and glory of our Redeemer. 

For it is possible for one to study Christ in His 
historical character, as the babe, the boy, the 
teacher, the helper, and the martyr, and by con- 
fining thought to these external relations to lose 
much of the real Christ, and of the blessing which 
the completer faith will confer. It is only when 
we open the Scriptures and find that they carry 
this Christ story far back to "the beginning," and 
from that immeasurable distance that they open 
up page after page of allusion to the Coming One, 
that we begin to apprehend the breadth of the 



16 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

divine purpose in revelation ; or, as it has been so 
aptly called, "the scarlet thread" of the testimony 
of Jesus, which runs on through prophecy after 
prophecy, age after age, and establishes our trust 
in the divine message and the divine Messenger, 

In all our speech of prophecy it is to be remem- 
bered, however, that the principal office of the 
prophet was that of preacher and teacher, and 
that the prophetical books in the main are devoted 
to religious instruction. Samuel was a prophet of 
the prophets, and the head of a great school of 
the prophets at Ramah. The names of his pupils 
are forgotten, but they bore a leading part in the 
religious instruction of Israel. When we trace 
the course of such teachers as Amos, Jeremiah, 
Ezekiel, and Isaiah, who stand in the forefront of 
the prophets, we remark that their special func- 
tion was to warn the king and the nation in the 
hour of national peril, and admonish them to turn 
from their backslidings and call upon the name of 
the Lord. They reproved the people for their 
vanities and sins, and pleaded with them to 
observe the Law and the duty of worship. As we 
peruse these prophetical books we are led to 
admire the unflinching courage of these old-time 
preachers, who would not hold their peace, and 
who risked their all while they exhorted their 
hearers to hearken unto God. 

A secondary office of the prophet, but incidental 
to that of preaching and teaching, was the predic- 
tion of future events. Scattered here and there 
all through the Old Testament, embedded some- 
times in some historical narrative, or introduced 
into the body of a fervent appeal, there occur 



PREMONITIONS OF THE ADVENT 17 

special promises of protection for the Chosen Peo- 
ple, or declarations of disaster to their enemies, 
or predictions of a Savior whom God was to send 
forth in the fulness of the times, or of the final 
triumph of righteousness ; so that the whole world 
should become subject to the gentle rule of the 
Prince Immanuel. 

It was this class of premonitions, of predictive 
prophecy, to which Peter cites the attention of his 
readers, and which he terms "a more sure word 
of prophecy,'' and which in the Church was to be 
like ''a light that shineth in a dark plaxeJ' 

Such premonitions, such predictive prophecy, 
served in part as an assurance of the abiding and 
never failing providence of God in the care of his 
people. Promises of this kind were given to 
Abraham, and were repeated to Isaac and Jacob, 
who were told that they were to occupy and hold 
the Land of Promise from generation to genera- 
tion. In all their wanderings from the Far East 
to Palestine, and from Palestine to Egypt and 
back again, they had the sustaining comfort of 
that pledge, and the fair prospect of a settled habi- 
tation in their home land, where they could dwell 
securely under their own vine and fig tree. 

Later, when the nation was facing the peril of 
Egypt and Babylon, and later still when they were 
bemoaning their captivity in a strange land, they 
v/ere supported in their affliction by the pledge 
that the Lord would turn the captivity of Zion. 

An important function of these Biblical pre- 
monitions, of these predictive prophecies, was 
their witness to the truth of divine revelation. We 
have a strong appeal to the truth of the divine 



18 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

Word, an appeal to which we assign a high valua- 
tion, in the moral excellence of the message which 
came to the world through the patriarchs and the 
prophets. In this respect the Bible stands alone 
and unparalleled. In other Sacred Books, so- 
called, we find frequently recurring examples of 
weakness and triviality, but the Bible maintains a 
consistent sublimity of tone ; and while the others 
frequently descend to palliations and justifications 
for immorality and sin, the Bible from cover to 
cover upholds the highest standard of truth and 
goodness. Blessed be that Holy Book, whose pre- 
cepts we revere, and whose winsome invitations 
inspire us to noblest effort. 

"How precious is the Book divine, 
By inspiration given. 
Bright as a lamp its doctrines shine 
To guide our souls to Heaven." 

But the exalted moral appeal of the Bible has 
the limitation that its most effective appeal 
reaches only those who are already in sympathy 
with an exalted morality, and whose souls respond 
quickly to spiritual influences. To reach the many 
who are weak in moral cultivation the approach 
nust be made from a different angle. Here enters 
che advantage of predictive prophecy in that it 
makes its approach to the intellect, and so can the 
better reach and convince the average man. Make 
it clear to him that the Bible offers definite state- 
ments as to men and events that are to have their 
day in some far off future, and then show him that 
such persons have lived, and such events have 
occurred in strict fulfilment of the prediction, and 



PREMONITIONS OF THE ADVENT 19 

he cannot escape the conviction that premonitions 
of that class are of divine origin, and that they 
constitute a part of the divine revelation. In fact, 
if he has the logical mind, that will follow sound 
reason to its conclusions, he will see that such pre- 
monitions support and confirm the claim for the 
divine origin of the entire revelation; of the 
predictions themselves, and the historical writ- 
ings, and the prophetical writings of which they 
form a substantial and an essential part. 

But some have made the claim that prophetical 
predictions — those of the Old Testament, and all 
others that make similar pretense — are not to be 
trusted, since in the word of Scripture, ''Many 
false prophets are gone out into the world." And 
it is lamentably true that there have been many 
deceivers, and many pretenders to foretelling 
future events. Some such are mentioned in the 
Old Testament history. And among the heathen 
such pretenders were numerous, some of whom 
had a great vogue among the people. Their oracles 
were enshrined in vast temples, whose corridors 
w^ere crowded with the votive offerings of their 
deluded believers. Such came to consult the 
oracle as to the possible recovery of the sick, as to 
the outcome of their commercial ventures, and as 
to whether their military expeditions would be 
crowned with victory, or be shamed by defeat. It 
was the common practice with their priests to put 
forth their oracular utterances in such ambiguous 
phrase as would fit either event, life or death, suc- 
cess or failure, victory or disaster; so that what- 
ever the outcome the honor and veracity of the 
shrine would be sustained. 



20 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

Because of such fraudulent pretensions there is 
good reason for applying an adequate test to all 
professed prophetical utterances, whether of the 
Scripture or other, and any such which really pro- 
ceed from a divine source should respond to three 
crucial conditions: 

1. They will concern persons, matters, or 
events that are of vital moment. 

2. They will be definite and circumstantial. 

3. They will be of a nature such as to be be- 
yond the reach of human capacity to make accu- 
rate forecast. 

It has been said that real prophetical predic- 
tions will concern persons, matters, or events that 
are of vital moment. It is not to be imagined that 
Divinity will occupy itself with inanities and triv- 
ialities. There was occasion for the prophet to 
predict the rise of a Cyrus, who was to make pos- 
sible the rebuilding of the Temple; or to predict 
the overthrow of hostile cities, or the dispersion 
of Israel in the Gentile nations. 

And divine predictions may be expected to be 
definite and circumstantial, so that when they 
were fulfilled the fact could be verified beyond con- 
tradiction. Divinity has no need for veiling its 
utterances in obscurity. The prophet himself at 
the time of his announcement might not realize 
the full import of his message, but when the fulfil- 
ment arrived the matching of fact with forecast 
would be so complete as to make assurance doubly 
sure. 

And divine predictions are expected to be of a 
nature quite past the range of the conjectures of 
human judgment. 



PREMONITIONS OF THE ADVENT 21 

While Louis XVI. was still on the French throne 
Edmund Burke in the British House of Commons 
declared that there was prospect of a revolution 
across the Channel. His judgment was justified 
when the mob tore down the Bastile and sent the 
king to the guillotine. And so before our Ameri- 
can Civil War Arthur Helps wrote his book, '*The 
Impending Crisis/' in which he advised that a 
struggle was impending between the advocates of 
human slavery on the one side and the friend of 
freedom on the other. And in 1911 Lord Roberts 
predicted that Germany was plotting a war against 
England and English interests, for which he was 
ridiculed by men high in authority right and left. 
In all these notable instances, however, though 
the events predicted were still, in the future, they 
were of the kind that follow in the natural course 
of affairs under causes, which might slip the 
average mind, but which statesmen who are accus- 
tomed to weigh causes and effects would notice 
to their inevitable conclusion. A really divine 
prediction would not rely upon possibilities so 
evident as these, but would forecast results which 
would lie outside the realm of human reasoning 
or conjecture. 

These three several tests are met completely in 
the prophecies of the Old Testament. Consider 
the predictions respecting the family of Abraham, 
to which reference has been made. That family 
was to possess the land of Palestine, and it was to 
increase till its numbers became like the leaves of 
the forest for multitude, or like the waves of the 
sea. Now Abraham had but the two sons, Ishmael 
and Isaac. Isaac had but two sons, Jacob and 



22 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

-^ 
Esau. Jacob had twelve sons, and when he trav- 
eled to Egypt there were altogether seventy souls 
in his caravan, counting the children, servants, 
and herdsmen. What natural expectation could 
there have been that this particular seventy, 
facing the vicissitudes of famine, of the desert 
journey, of attack by robbers on the way, and of 
sojourn in a strange land, could live and expand 
to become a great multitude? Why should they 
not have been lost, as the brook is lost that flows 
into the thirsty sand of the wilderness? And yet 
Israel has survived, and still survives ; though ten 
of its twelve tribes were lost so that no man know- 
eth of them to this day ; and the Jew continues on, 
scattered all over the globe, and hisi race is possi- 
bly the most numerous of any that traces its origin 
to a single head. In this instance the predictions 
of the Scripture have been fulfilled definitely and 
circumstantially. 

Then we have the prophecies concerning Baby- 
lon. At the time when Jeremiah raised his lament 
over Babylon that proud city was the capital of 
the mightiest of the world empires. Her armies 
were marching from the Euphrates to the Medi- 
terranean, and even to the borders of Egypt. Her 
commerce covered the whole East. Her walls 
were lofty, some three hundred feet in height, and 
within them she could assemble her armies and 
withstand a siege of years. And yet while Babylon 
stood thus as the queen city of the Euphrates, and 
when to all human appearance she would probably 
hold her dominion to the end of time, Jeremiah 
declared that her glory must fade, that an assem- 
bly of nations should come out of the north. 



PREMONITIONS OF THE ADVENT 23 

(50 : 9) , that her defenders should become as cow- 
ardly as women, (50: 30), that the river which 
was her defence should be dried up, (51 : 36) , that 
their drunkenness and revellings should cause 
them to sleep a perpetual sleep, (51:39), that 
armed men should throng her streets like cater- 
pillars, (51:14), and that as a result Babylon 
should become as heaps, a dwelling place for 
dragons. (51:37). 

All that circumstantial fate befel the doomed 
city exactly as it was foretold. Cyrus came down 
from the Persian mountains with his host drawn 
from many tribes. His armies surrounded the 
city. He cut a canal for the Euphrates outside 
the city wall. One night while Belshazzar and his 
great lords were besotted in drunken carousal, he 
turned aside the river into its new channel, and 
marched his soldiers in the old bed of the stream 
under the massive gates of bronze, till in a few 
hours he was master of the impregnable capital. 
Belshazzar was slain and his empire passed to the 
Medes and Persians. Later still Alexander the 
Great defeated Darius the Persian, and presently 
Babylon passed altogether. Her trade was diverted 
to other routes. The sun-dried bricks of her walls 
and palaces were dissolved by the elements, and 
walls, hanging gardens, and palaces became heaps 
in the desert, till in the Middle Age there was not 
a remnant of all her proud edifices remaining 
above ground, so that doubts were current as to 
any such city ever having been in existence. Only 
within our own time has the spade of the archeol- 
ogist unearthed the ruins and established the cer- 
tainty of Jeremiah's prophetic forecast. And 



24 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

that prediction was made two hundred years be- 
fore Cyrus was born. 

The instance of Egypt parallels that of Babylon. 
Once Egypt was omnipotent in the ancient world, 
the richest empire, the mightiest, and boasted the 
most advanced civilization. The ruins of her 
magnificent palaces and temples, and her vast 
pyramids which still stand among the world won- 
ders, testify with eloquent voice of the reality of 
her greatness. While she was still in the height 
of her glory the prophet Ezekiel prophesied 
against her that, ''Egypt shall he the basest of the 
kingdoms, neither shall it exalt itself any more 
among the nations.'' (29:15). And Egypt fell 
from her high estate. Her prosperity was broken. 
Greek, Roman, and Saracen in succession seized 
upon her dominion, and to this hour through more 
than twenty-four centuries, not a native prince of 
Egyptian lineage has held her sceptre. So this 
moment she is in the enjoyment of her most pros- 
perous season for centuries, and she has this bless- 
ing as a dependency of the British Empire. 

Then, too, we may remember Tyre. Tyre was a 
city of Phoenicia, and was great when Israel 
crossed the Jordan to enter the Promised Land. 
One of her kings was an intimate friend of Solo- 
mon. She manufactured the finest of cloths, made 
the richest dyes, and wrought fine metal work, and 
glass and other products, which she sent in her 
ships all through the Mediterranean, and even to 
Britain. But in the midst of her prosperity 
Ezekiel lifted up his voice against her and prophe- 
sied that she should become like the top of a rock, 
a place for the spreading of nets. (26:14). And 



PREMONITIONS OF THE ADVENT 25 

precisely that has become the fate of Tyre. She 
suffered repeated attacks from other nations. 
Again and again her homes and palaces were 
destroyed by seize and fire. At last her industrial 
skill was forgotten. Her shipping rotted at her 
wharves. All her storied prosperity faded like a 
feverish dream. Such a fate was deemed impos- 
sible by the generation that heard the prophet's 
word, and they scoffed at him as if he were 
demented, but time has fulfilled his prediction to 
the letter. 

Prophecies of this class partake of the nature 
of the miracle. They are voices from the unseen 
world. They demonstrate the providential care 
of God and His omniscient power, whereby He 
sees the end from the beginning. 

But the prophecies to which Peter especially 
refers, and which are ''like the light that shineth 
in a dark place/' are those which proclaim the 
coming of Messiah, the Christ. All the way from 
Genesis to Malachi there are found premonitions 
of His coming, and they were so definite and cir- 
cumstantial that in the time of Augustus the 
entire race of the Jews was in the attitude of 
eager expectation of their deliverer. 

As we read these Messianic predictions which 
foretell His race, the time of the Advent, the town 
Bethlehem in which He was to be born, the service 
He was to render to the world, the rejection He 
should suffer from His own people, the price for 
which He was to be sold, the lots that were to be 
cast for His vesture, the making His grave with 
the rich. His resurrection from the dead, and the 
ingathering of the Gentiles, we are impelled to the 



26 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

conviction that the prophecy reads like the his- 
tory, and that the history matches the prophecy. 

We are not to wonder then, when Jesus after 
the resurrection went walking toward Emmaus 
and consorted with Luke and Cleopas, who failed 
to recognize Him, that ''beginning at Moses, and 
all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the 
Scriptures the things concerning himself.'' (Luke 
24:27). 

Nor need we feel surprise that Stephen, the 
eloquent deacon, made excellent use of the proph- 
ecies with the men in the Asiatic synagogues, so 
that ''they were -not able to resist the wisdom and 
the spirit by which he spake/' (Acts 6: 10). 

And there was that African treasurer, who was 
riding in his chariot on his way to far distant 
home, and lightened the tediousness of the jour- 
ney by reading out of the Book of Isaiah that pas- 
sage of the suffering Savior, and who asked Philip 
to explain to him the Scripture. Of this we are 
told that "Philip opened his mouth, and began at 
the same Scripture, and preached unto him Jesu^." 
(Acts 8:35). 

Time and again in recent years these prophecies 
have been helpful in refuting the objections of 
the unbeliever and bringing converts to the 
Savior. In our modern church we may be( thank- 
ful to God for giving us the New Testament, with 
its beautiful gospel stories of Jesus and His mis- 
sion, and with them the rest of the Book, which 
serves to elaborate and explain the main story. 

But if we are to be really wise in the faith we 
shall not confine our reading to the later Scrip- 
tures alone. For in the Old Testament we shall 



1 



PREMONITIONS OF THE ADVENT 27 

find broad fields awaiting investigation, which will 
enlarge our understanding of God's dealing with 
His people; and among the richest of our finds, 
which will give us the clearer vision of our Lord, 
we will place the ''more sure word of prophecy, 
whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, a^ unto a 
light that shineth in a dark place, until the day 
daivn and the day star arise in your hearts.'^ 
(2 Peter 1:19). 



THE COVENANT BEARER 



II. 

THE COVENANT BEARER 

JESUS is the problem of the ages, of our own 
age no less than of those that have gone 
before, and He will be the problem of the 
ages that follow us. This is so primarily because 
finiteness cannot comprehend infinity, and also 
because the most of men fix their minds upon sin- 
gle traits of His nature and so miss the breadth 
of His being. The Jewish nation failed conspicu- 
ously in this respect. He was their long-expected 
messenger, but when He came, message in hand, 
they turned Him aside, because they saw Him as 
the Nazarene, that and no more. And so they 
scouted and derided Him. They were all astray as 
respects His origin. His person, and His mission, 
and so they flouted the one person of their race 
who has given it its highest glory. 

Pilate, the Roman governor, before whom Jesus 
w^as haled, estimated Him as a prisoner whom 
malice was accusing. As a magistrate he w^as 
inclined to befriend Him up to the point where 
His own political aspirations were involved, and 
then he sacrificed his prisoner without a scruple. 
Pilate's wife was wiser than her husband, and 
warned him to have nothing to do with ^'that just 
man." She recognized the saintliness of Jesus, 
but past that her vision halted. And it will be the 
same with any one who surveys Jesus in any one 



32 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

of His numerous offices and confines thought to 
that. So some acknowledge Him as Master. That 
He was, for He was teacher to His disciples all 
through His ministry on earth. But while He 
was the Master then, he was also much more. Let 
Him be applauded as the Reformer. And He was 
that also, but to regard Him merely as the 
Reformer is to miss consciousness of the real 
Christ. Suppose Him to be viewed as the Miracle 
Worker, or a chief of the Martyrs. But the whole 
Christ is not to be reckoned as summed up in any 
one of these characters. It is only as we study 
Him as He is revealed in the Scripture, in the 
prophecies, in the history, and in the combination 
of all these representations, that we can begin to 
realize anything of His actual power and majesty 
or anything of His unrivalled glory as the Only 
Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. 

One aspect of the Savior, which requires early 
attention, is His office of Covenant Bearer, which 
is mentioned in Malachi, who was the last of the 
Old Testament preachers. Of this the prophet 
speaks, Chapter 3, verse 1, saying, ''Behold I will 
send my messenger , and he shall prepare the way 
before me; and the Lord whom ye seek shall sud- 
denly come to his temple, even the Messenger of 
the Covenant, whom ye delight in; behold he shall 
come, saith the Lord of Hosts.'' This language 
suggests the lapse of the Old Covenant and the 
substitution of one that is new and an improve- 
ment on the other that has fallen out by the way. 

In the early days God had instituted a Cove- 
nant with His servant Noah, when He showed him 
the rainbow in the heavens and gave him the 



II 



THE COVENANT BEARER 33 

pledge, while the earth remained that seedtime 
and harvest, summer and winter, and cold and 
heat should not cease. 

Later on God called Abram out of Chaldea and 
made another Covenant with him and his seed 
after him. He was the Friend of God, faithful 
and tried, and God was friend to him and his 
house. This Abrahamic Covenant was renewed 
with Isaac and Jacob, and then again was renewed 
in splendid detail and formal ceremonies with 
Six— S B 

Moses and the people of Israel, after their exodus 
from Egypt. Under the terms of this Covenant 
God was to be the Father and Protector of Israel, 
and Israel was to love, serve, and worship Him. 

Now a covenant in its simplest terms is an 
agreement, a compact, a contract, more or less 
formal in its nature ; an engagement between two 
persons or interests, according to which they bar- 
gain, each with the other, to perform some sub- 
stantial service. In a real covenant each of the 
parties to the engagement is to give, and each is to 
receive. 

One may imagine himself a merchant and about 
to engage a clerk to sell goods for him over his 
counter. He covenants and agrees with the young 
man to pay him so many dollars a week, provided 
he works as he directs for so many hours six days 
in the week. This covenant may be verbal, or it 
may be written down in black and white, signed, 
sealed, and delivered, with all legal formality. 
But in either case it is a covenant, legal and bind- 
ing both in law and morals. What gives it its 
binding force, as the lawyers would state it, is the 



34 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

meeting of the minds of the contracting parties as 
to the service or obligation which each is to render 
to the other, and then their actually entering upon 
the service or obligation. The essential part is 
that both covenant to serve, and that both actually 
assume the duty or obligation as contracted for. 

Under that Covenant of Abraham, which was 
renewed by Moses and the people of Israel, God 
on His part gave them a holy and spiritual faith, 
a noble and distinctive form of religious worship, 
and the assurance of His sovereign guidance and 
protection. For its part Israel was to cut loose 
from all entanglements which might corrupt the 
people's character or morals, to reject all service 
to the gods of the heathen, which were but dumb 
idols, and all were to conform their conduct to 
God's pure and holy commandment, and live a 
peculiar people, whose God was the Lord. 

When the Chosen People who had agreed to this 
Covenant entered the Land of Canaan, God ful- 
filled for them every promise He had made. He 
gave victory to their armies and swept away their 
adversaries like chaff before the tempest. He 
settled their tribes on fertile tracts, where the 
vine and the olive and the fig tree flourished, and 
where their fields were a riot of fertility and 
abundance. He preserved them from the incur- 
sions of robbers, and under David, the king, they 
extended their bounds, and grew to be a great 
nation, feared and respected by all the nations 
round about. And while David still was king, he 
subdued for them the last great stronghold of the 
Canaanites, the rock Jebus, the most conspicuous 
elevation in the whole country south of Mt. Her- 



THE COVENANT BEARER 35 

mon, and here he sustained David, while the 
king built here his capital city, Jerusalem, 
which he adorned with his royal palace, 
and where he fixed upon the site for the tem- 
ple which in the following reign became the 
crown and glory of Zion. Here it was that God 
extended His blessing to Solomon, the son of 
David, while he continued to walk in the faith of 
his fathers : and when Solomon erected the temple 
— one of the wonders of the ancient world — God 
consecrated it by sending the fire from heaven, 
which consumed the burnt offering and the sacri- 
fice. And He further hallowed that temple by the 
presence of the Shekinah, that effulgent blaze, the 
symbol of the divine presence, which flooded the 
Holy of Holies and glorified the Mercy Seat of the 
Ark of the Covenant. 

But although God stood faithful to the cove- 
nant, Israel was recreant. All through its ex- 
tended history that nation exhibited the wayward- 
ness of a spoiled child. The more that God show- 
ered His blessings, the more the nation went 
astray with pettishness and frivolity. Now and 
then the nation served God, but soon again was in 
revolt against the restraints of faith and was fol- 
lowing its own unhallowed inclinations. Because 
Israel had forgotten God and violated the cove- 
nant Malachi raised his voice in disapproval. They 
had turned their faces away from the house of 
the Lord. They had neglected the altar to consort 
with the heathen. They had failed to regard the 
commandments of the moral law. They had con- 
doned the sins of the sorcerers, the adulterers, the 
perjurers, and those who oppressed the servant in 



36 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

his wages. Even the priests had despised God's 
honor, in that they had accepted contemptible 
creatures to bej offered in sacrifice, such as the 
blind, the lame, the sick, the torn ; such creatures 
as were unmarketable and which under the Levit- 
ical law were debarred from the altar. In all 
these ways they had been committing sin and dis- 
honoring God. And so, because of Israel's 
departure from duty, and because the people had 
forsaken God, the Most High was to declare the 
Old Covenant abrogated, void, and of none effect ; 
and He was to send forth His Messenger, who was 
to offer mankind, and confirm with them, a new 
and more spiritual Covenant. 

From this distance, as we survey the passing of 
the Old Covenant, we realize the loss which Israel 
was bringing upon herself. The position of the 
Chosen People had been one of the highest privi- 
lege. Allusion has been made to the peace and 
prosperity which they had enjoyed so long as they 
held true to their best convictions. Not only dur- 
ing all that period were they blessed in the 
increase of their flocks and herds, and in all man- 
ner of material wealth ; but what was far better, 
they possessed the consciousness of dwelling in 
favor with God. This assurance of the smile of 
heaven made their days brighter, since it con- 
ferred a sense of security for the morrow. Still 
more it was a privilege to know, out of all the 
religions of the world, that their own was the 
purest and the most inspiring. Any Jew who 
traveled abroad into any other land, in Moab, or 
Phoenicia, or Egypt, found himself in an atmos- 
phere of religious strangeness and depression. He 



THE COVENANT BEARER 37 

could see that the priests of the heathen were 
exploiting the people, playing upon their fears, 
and multiplying their superstitious observances in 
order to exact the more bountiful revenue. He 
could see that every heathen temple was a training 
school of iniquity, and was busily engaged in 
teaching deceit and trickery, and often that it was 
a pander to lustful vice. The conceptions of the 
Deity which were current among the heathen 
were low and debasing, and their gods were pic- 
tured as having all the passions and frailties of 
men. The return of the wanderer from such a 
journey, and his visit to the altar of God, gave him 
a sense of relief and of power to draw a fresh 
breath after his contact with ideas and opinions 
that were rank soul poison. The contrast was wide, 
for his own faith, with its God of perfect holiness, 
justice, and truth, drew forth the best that was in 
him, and inspired him to higher ideals in charac- 
ter and endeavor. 

And he could rejoice in having the results of 
such a pure and inspiring faith. For it is the 
religion of a nation that inspires its life and sets 
the current of its customs and traditions. In a 
way religion may be taken both as a cause and 
effect. It is a cause in so far as it establishes 
standards of conduct and urges men to live up to 
them; and it is an effect to the extent that men 
will support that form of religion only which rep- 
resents principles which they actually possess. 
Thus the worship of Moloch and of Chemosh, 
which the Bible denounces, tended to make men 
m.ore selfish and fierce and cruel than they were by 
nature, and while it was doing that it was acting 



38 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

as the effective cause of a development so unfor- 
tunate. And then these men, who were selfish, 
and fierce, and cruel, experienced a fiercef and un- 
holy pleasure in attending their frightful cere- 
monies, in the course of which other peoples' chil- 
dren, and even their own, were cast into the red 
hot bosom of the brazen idol. The cruel men 
reflected their own cruel natures in their enjoy- 
ment of a cruel worship. 

But the worship of Isr^^l, and all the precepts 
of its faith, tended toward the promotion of the 
beautiful traits of mercy and kindness, of hon- 
esty and fair dealing, characteristics which 
established and confirmed confidence in all social 
and industrial intercourse. The Ten Command- 
ments set the ideal of conduct in all human rela- 
tionships, in man's duty to God and also to his 
neighbor; and when these commandments were 
observed they produced contentment and happi- 
ness in the seclusion of the home, and outside the 
home they established that trust and reliance on 
the good faith of others which is the essential 
foundation of social peace and prosperity. Just so 
long as Israel was faithful to the Covenant, the 
nation had joy and comfort in its worship, and a 
delightful consciousness of success in trade and 
government, both domestic and foreign. 

Wherein Israel went astray was in yielding to 
the social temptation. As a rule the most of the 
ills of the world take their start through social 
influence and example. It was the divine purpose 
in isolating the Hebrew race, in calling Abram 
away from Chaldea, and in bringing Israel out of 
Egypt and placing the people in Palestine, to free 



THE COVENANT BEARER 39 

them from the enticements growing out of inti- 
macy with people of low pursuits and pleasures. 
But all the while that God was endeavoring to 
keep His people pure, they were working in direct 
opposition to the divine program. For they con- 
sorted freely with the heathen, mingled with 
them in banquet and festival, and continued to 
contract marriages between their children and 
those of the heathen. When it is understood that 
nearly all the heathen banquets were associated 
with their idolatrous sacrifices, it is seen that 
every Hebrew who attended them was in the act 
betraying his own worship and giving counte- 
nance to idolatry. In any case, whether he under- 
stood the significance of his course or not, such 
was the natural consequence. And the more that 
such practices prevailed, and the more that Israel 
consorted socially with the heathen, by just so 
much the more was the true religion weakened in 
their own hearts, and the more moral restraints 
were dismissed from their own lives. 

But not only were the common people aposta- 
tizing from the faith in this manner, for the lead- 
ers of the nation, princes, and kings, men whose 
duty it was to hold the people loyal to conscience 
and religion, were deserters from principle and 
v/anderers from God. 

In his boyhood Solomon was God's faithful 
servant. When he grew older, however, he fol- 
lowed the lure of ambition into devious ways. He 
was eager to cement alliances with his neighbors, 
and so took to himself the daughters of their 
kings as his wives; and then in order to make 
these women contented in his capital, he built for 



40 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

them gorgeous palaces, and also erected high 
places for them where they might worship their 
false gods. In this manner he surmounted three 
of the principal elevations of the Mount of Olives 
with such high places for Ashtoreth, Chemosh, 
and Moloch ; and these wives of the king, and their 
throng of courtiers, formed a numerous and influ- 
ential class in Jerusalem, all of whose habits, tra- 
ditions, and customs were interwoven inextricably 
with heathenism, and were contrary to the law of 
God and the welfare of Israel. 

Rehoboam, who was the son of Solomon by an 
Ammonitish mother, continued these abomina- 
tions of his father, and surpassed him in his trans- 
gressions. As a result it was under Rehoboam 
that the great schism occurred, the breaking away 
of the ten northern tribes, and the setting up of 
Samaria as the capital of the Northern Kingdom. 
And here it was that Ahab, king of Israel, con- 
tracted marriage with Jezebel, the princess of 
Tyre. She built a great temple in Samaria to 
Baal, the false god of the Phoenicians. It was 
Ahab and Jezebel who made Israel to sin so abom- 
inably that the prophet Elijah came to be doubt- 
ful whether there was a man left in Israel who 
had not bowed the knees to Baal. 

Under influences ; such as these, influences 
creeping upward from the common people, and 
others spreading downward from the throne, the 
heart of the nation was alienated from God. His 
altars were neglected and profaned, and there was 
so much wickedness abroad in the land that Mala- 
chi, God's servant, openly pronounced the lapse of 
the former Covenant, and its replacement by one 



THE COVENANT BEARER 41 

that was more spiritual; a new Covenant to be 
contracted between God and such people as were 
disposed to serve Him in deed and in truth. 

It was some four hundred and twenty years 
before the Advent of Jesus, that Malachi, glanc- 
ing down the perspective of the ages, predicted 
His coming, and described five principal points of 
identification by which He was to be recognized. 

1. He was to be announced by a forerunner; 
thus, Mai. 3 : 1, ''Behold, I will send my messenger, 
and he shall prepare the way before me." The 
same thought recurs in Ch. 4 : 5 and 6, where it is 
written, ''Behold, I will send you Elijah, the 
prophet, before the coming of the great and 
dreadful day of the Lord, and he shall turn the 
heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart 
of the children to their fathers, lest I come and 
smite the earth with a curse." The idea of a her- 
ald to prepare the way for the Messiah appears in 
Isaiah 40 : 3, which reads with manifest allusion 
to John the Baptist, "The voice of him that crieth 
in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. 
Make straight in the desert a highway for our 
God." So also Zacharias, the father of John, 
declared of him in the temple, "And thou, child, 
shalt be called the prophet of the Highest, for 
thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to pre- 
pare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation 
unto his people by the remission of their sinsJ* 

2. A second mark of the Covenant Bearer was 
to be the suddenness of his coming. This appears 
in the word, "And the Lord whom ye seek shall 
suddenly come to his temple." (Mai. 3:1). The 
expectation of Israel for The Coming One was 



42 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

long and eager. In every Jewish household the 
hope was cherished that the next child might be 
the longed-for Sent of God. Century succeeded 
century, and yet there was no Deliverer. When 
he was born, it was in Bethlehem of Judea; but 
He was not to tarry there, for an angel bade 
Joseph take the young child and His mother 
and flee into Egypt. There He was to stay till 
Herod was dead and the danger from him was 
over-past. So it was when Jesus finally came, and 
was acknowledged by John at the fords of the 
Jordan, it was as sudden to Israel as a flash of 
lightning out of a clear sky. 

3. A third distinguishing mark of the Cove- 
nant Bearer was to be His connection with the 
temple: ''and the Lord whom ye seek shall sud- 
denly come to his temple/' (Mai. 3:1). Now 
Jesus all through His ministry was associated 
with the temple. When He was but two weeks 
old He was taken to the temple, where He was 
blessed by the saintly Simeon, who was ready to 
die, now that he had seen the Lord's salvation. 
At the age of twelve He was in the temple, 
engaged in discussion of great matters of the law 
with the doctors, asking and answering their 
questions; in which service, as he explained to 
Mary, He was attending to His Father's business. 
From the moment of His manifestation to Israel, 
though he was traveling from end to end of the 
land, when any of the great feasts were to be 
celebrated, He was to be found in or about the 
temple, teaching the people and expounding the 
law of the Kingdom. On the day of His triumphal 
entry into Jerusalem, when the people hailed Him 



THE COVENANT BEARER 43 

as king, He was on the way to the temple, where 
He manifested His royalty by casting out the cat- 
tle drovers and money changers. And at the very 
last, when He was suffering the trial of the cross, 
as He surrendered the spirit, His close associa- 
tion with the temple was shown by the rending of 
the massive veil, which separated the Holy of 
Holies from the Holy Place. That rending of the 
veil was symbol of the termination of the priest- 
hood of Aaron and the dawn of a new religious 
dispensation. 

4. The fourth mark of identification was that 
He was to introduce a new covenant. Malachi had 
named Him "Messenger of the Covenant." Jere- 
miah had referred to such a new covenant in a 
remarkable passage: ''Behold the day cometh, 
tliat I will make a new covenant with the hoitse of 
Israel, and with the hoitse of Judah; not according 
to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in 
the day that I took them by the hand to bring them 
out of the land of Egypt, which covenant they 
brake." ( Jer. 31 : 17) . Paul, referring to this 
passage, applies it to Jesus, when in His word to 
the Hebrews he tells them that they are come to 
''the mediator of the new covenant J' (Heb. 12 : 24) . 

5. The fifth mark of identification of the com- 
ing messenger was to the effect that the new cove- 
nant was to be an open door for the in-coming of 
the non-Hebrew races, so that they, too, by the 
divine mercy might become children of redeeming 
grace. Of this feature of the covenant Malachi 
declares, "From the rising of the sun unto the 
going down of the same, my name shall be great 
among the Gentiles: and in every place incense 



44 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

shall be offered in my name, and a pure offering: 
for my name shall be great among the heathen 
saith the Lord of Hosts/' (1 : 11) . 

The Psalmist shows that God had given the like 
pledge to the coming Savior, for we read in the 
second chapter, v. 8, ''Ask of me and I will give 
thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the 
uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession/^ 
Isaiah, who has been called the Evangelical 
Prophet, abounds with promises of the redemp- 
tion of the Gentiles through the agency of the 
Messiah. One such is this passage, ''Behold my 
servant, whom I behold; mine elect, in whom my 
soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: 
he shall bring judgment to the Gentiles. * * * A 
bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking 
flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judg- 
ment unto truth." (Isa. 42: 1, 2). Thus the new 
Messenger was to be the herald of a new and all 
comprehensive hope, a Messenger of glad tidings 
to all men of every nation everywhere. 

The Christ whp came to the Holy Land in the 
Augustan Age fulfilled these amazingly accurate 
predictions of His work and mission to the letter. 
He came as an accredited and competent Covenant 
Bearer. No one of all the teachers and preachers 
of the former age compared with Him as a com- 
plete representative of the All Father. No one 
w^as His equal in spotlessness of character, in wis- 
dom free from every flaw, or in the dignity of His 
presence. All previous messengers were them- 
selves from the earth, but He was the Lord from 
Heaven. He declared Himself the Son of the 



THE COVENANT BEARER 45 

Father, and so the sacred voice that spoke from 
the heavens at His baptism pronounced Him. 

Coming with such an origin and such antece- 
dents, He was qualified to declare the terms and 
conditions of the New Covenant, and to include in 
its benefits all who accepted its provisions. 

As the Covenant Bearer Christ brought a mes- 
sage of divine mercy. His code offers no hard 
and fast regulations, no law under which the inno- 
cent could be made guilty by help of clever tech- 
nicalities. From first to last His covenant is to be 
spiritually interpreted, and it applies to spiritual 
motives and conditions. It calls for a service in 
which a spiritual worship, rendered in spirit and 
in truth, outweighs form and ceremony. Under 
the Gospel the fear of God is to be shown, not by 
the bullocks and lambs that are brought to the 
altar, but by voluntary heart consecration. Be- 
cause God is love. He is the Father of His people, 
and of all service that can be rendered Him, the 
service of love is supreme and the most acceptable. 

Because the Covenant Bearer was God's own 
Messenger and was bringing the supreme message 
of love, it was to be the ultimate, the final message 
of all. The Old Covenant with the Jews, which 
they had violated, and which God had abrogated, 
had passed into the dust bin of oblivion. But the 
New Covenant cannot be replaced or supplanted. 
Under the Gospel the chief of sinners may seek 
and obtain pardon; but whosoever rejects this 
Covenant of Infinite Mercy need not look for an- 
other to be offered him. There is no other : there 
can be no other. It is to Christ and His word that 
the wayward world must come. To Him it may 



46 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

look for peace and favor. To Him it must look for 
instruction in righteousness and for the way to 
eternal glory. 

Two considerations remain for the briefest com- 
ment. 

In sending forth His Covenant Bearer, in mak- 
ing His proclamation of salvation through Jesus 
Christ, God has completed His part in the vital 
compact of the ages. He has declared in all its 
beauty a plan of redemption, which should make 
commanding appeal to every pure and sincere soul. 
No one of sound mind could ask for a safer, a 
saner, or a more merciful covenant than this, 
which is offered through the gift of the Savior, 
our Christ. 

Since God has done His full part in His tender 
of the New Covenant, the next query is. How 
stands the case with ourselves? For a real cove- 
nant, as we all well know, requires two contracting 
parties, whose minds have come to the meeting 
point of agreement in terms, and in fact of serv- 
ice. As to this Covenant of Grace, in order that 
men may avail themselves of its provisions, they 
must come into actual agreement with, and into 
actual acceptance of the Gospel, and then they 
must live in faithful performance of the vows that 
they have taken. It is to be hoped that men 
may see for themselves the Christ as their Cove- 
nant Bearer, and so enter into full covenant rela- 
tions with the God of the Universe and into full 
possession of all the benefits which such a rela- 
tionship confers. 



THE PRIME REVELATION 



III. 

THE PRIME REVELATION 

REVELATION is the declaration of the un- 
known, the bringing forth from the unseen 
to human sight or understanding the 
knowledge which but for this aid would have 
remained in obscurity. It concerns matters, some 
of them of the highest import, which lie outside 
the realm of human reason and experience. 

In religion revelation makes clear the being of 
God, discloses His attributes, and sets forth the 
requirements which the divine power lays upon 
man, respecting the worship which he is to render, 
the obligation of personal morals, and the char- 
acter of his service to God and to the world in 
which he is placed as a responsible being. 

The Scriptures claim that the revelation of 
these matters was given to man from the begin- 
ning of his existence to a greater or less degree, 
and that other revelations have been given from 
time to time through the patriarchs of the Hebrew 
race. This contention has support from the well 
known fact that man in all ages and conditions has 
shown intimations of a feeling of dependence upon 
a superior power. Wherever the modern man has 
explored the remains of buried cities, the most 
substantial structures which he has unearthed as 
a rule have been those which have been devoted 
to some form of worship. The shrines of religion 



50 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

have surpassed the palaces of kings in their 
extent, in their magnificence, and in their power 
to resist the forces of destruction of every kind. 
The reverence for the temple which was displayed 
in all these details of construction is a mute wit- 
ness of the strength of the religious sentiment 
that was current in the ancient world. 

And the universal prevalence of worship of 
some kind points to the conclusion of an early 
revelation to the race concerning God. For the 
conviction of the existence of a divine power 
appears to be the general inheritance of mankind. 
No tribe has yet been discovered, either so debased 
or so ignorant, as not to possess some idea of 
bending before Divinity, and of seeking in some 
manner to conciliate its favor. 

Touching this idea of the divine Being, Vol- 
taire is reported to have said, "If God did not 
exist, it would be necessary to invent Him." Just 
what the brilliant essayist intended to convey by 
this remark is; uncertain. It could not be that he 
was controverting the existence of a Supreme 
Being, for his free thinking never ran that far. 
Possibly he was saying that the revelation of God 
was so wide-spread, that all reasonable men must 
concur with the affirmation, and if such was his 
thought it has justification in the facts which have 
been mentioned. Or perchance he was saying 
that, as the human mind is constituted, in the 
course of its reasonings from effects back to 
causes, and as it turned its attention to the orderly 
conduct of the universe, it would some day take 
the bold leap from the finite to the infinite, from 
lower causes to the First Great Cause, from whom 



THE PRIME REVELATION 51 

all other causes proceed. If this were his mean- 
ing, he had good ground for his expression. 

Man has the religious nature. Even in those 
who are wicked and cruel there is the latent force 
of a repressed religious longing. And wherever 
through mediation or by help of some external 
agency, like a spiritual awakening in the commun- 
ity, the better part of any man is aroused, he at 
once begins thinking about God, and about his 
obligation to the divine Power. Whoever in any 
assembly opens up the subject of God in a wise 
and tactful way is broaching the theme that will 
sound the hearts of his hearers to the profoundest 
depths. When Jesus therefore in His day intro- 
duced in His discourses a word respecting the 
divine existence. He was touching a very familiar 
chord. 

And yet in His conversations with the Jews it 
might be thought from the casual glance that He 
was closing and sealing fast the door to the knowl- 
edge of God. For He declared to them definitely 
that the knowledge of the Divine, which they sup- 
posed they had, was no knowledge at all ; that the 
current ideas of God and His attributes, which 
they had been cherishing, the ideas which they 
took with them to the synagogue worship, or to 
the temple worship, were vain and worthless, so 
that the God whom they were worshipping was in 
effect no God at all. This is the interpretation of 
His saying when He told them, 'Wo man knoweth 
vjho the Father is but the Son.'' (Luke 10: 22). 
That was a declaration that they were ignorant of 
God, that the Pharisees were ignorant of God, that 
the rabbis with all their learning were ignorant of 



52 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

God, that the priests who ministered at the altar 
were ignorant of God, and that the whole body 
and trend of their established religion, because of 
this prevalent ignorance of the True God, was a 
vain and unprofitable service, and much more a 
hindrance than a help to a pure spiritual life. 

But withal, while this bold statement may have 
seemed discouraging on the face, it was prepara- 
tion for better knowledge. The certainty that one 
does not know may stimulate the desire to know. 
The stolid ignorance that thanks God for its 
ignorance is fortifying itself in continued igno- 
rance. The African savage, who worships a 
carved stick, or a lump of clay, and who trembles 
at walking some familiar path, which the witch- 
doctor has barred with a bunch of feathers, is 
impervious to the consideration of a God of mercy 
and love, till he is well rid of the witch-doctor and 
all his stupid tricks and contrivances. The Gali- 
lean peasants, whom Jesus was teaching, ranked 
higher in the scale of intelligence than the poor 
savage, and yet they were as thoroughly in the 
dark as was he respecting the nature and attri- 
butes of Divinity. For in their minds they were 
continually imputing traits to God which were 
foreign to him, and they had no conception at all 
of the high traits which were essential to his real 
being. Practically to them he was but a tribal god, 
partial to the Jew and hostile to the Samaritan; 
loving the sons of Abraham, but regardless of the 
millions on millions of other people who were scat- 
tered all over the earth. They thought of Him also 
as a martinet god, a stickler for petty forms and 
observances ; as insisting of the tithing of herbs, 



THE PRIME REVELATION 53 

while neglecting the weightier matters of the law, 
such as justice, mercy, and righteousness. To all 
these assumptions they added another in imagin- 
ing Him to be a purchasable God, who could be 
bribed by dint of gifts and sacrifices to overlook 
their iniquities. In all this they were in the same 
evil case as the older Israel, whom God reproached 
with that biting accusation, ''Thou thoughtest 
that I was altogether such a one a^ thyself.'' (Ps. 
50:21). While they remained in that state of 
moral misconception, right living and the right 
approach to God were impossible. For their own 
moral improvement their darkness must be 
enlightened, and they be taught to draw nigh to 
God in a more intelligent way. 

But how can God be known truly by those who 
have misconceived His nature? How can they 
come to know Him as He is, to know the length 
and depth and height of the moral perfections of 
the Infinite? 

Some have imagined that God may be learned 
through His handiwork in the natural world. And 
it is possible through that source, after having the 
original revelation of Deity as a working basis, to 
acquire improved conceptions of His existence and 
His power. All His works in the infinity of their 
extent, and in their magnitude, and in their 
orderly action and interaction, proclaim His glory. 
He who has spread the heavens as a canopy for 
His throne, and has strung the starry orbs into a 
pearly girdle of omnipotence, must be boundless 
in power and infinite in wisdom. But to know 
merely the God of Power and of Glory is to acquire 
the alphabet of celestial knowledge. Men there 



54 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

are in numbers who behold all that glory of nature 
and who still stand apart from Him. By no means 
all who have made intimate exploration of the 
sciences, by no means all who have traced the 
orderly progress of earth-building in the structure 
of the rock-ribbed mountains, by no means all who 
have toiled with retorts and test-tubes and bat- 
teries, till they have mastered the secret of how 
the elements combine with each other and in what 
proportions, by no means all who have observed 
the motion of the heavenly bodies till they have 
come to weigh the sun and the stars as in a bal- 
ance, are of necessity in touch with God. Of all 
men such should be eminent in loyalty and devo- 
tion, and the most of them are ; and yet conspicu- 
ous names might be mentioned of chemists who 
have been immoral, of astronomers who were far 
from being models of religious observance, and of 
geologists who were little short of being pro- 
nounced atheists. We are not to look in either the 
telescope or the microscope to find the higher 
attributes of the Deity, since these are to be spirit- 
ually discerned and by help of a spiritual 
revelation. All the experience of the centuries 
confirms the conclusion in the mind of Zophar, 
that friend of Job, when he put the question, 
''Canst thou hy searching -find out God?'' None 
have so found Him from that day to the present 
hour. 

And philosophy may not be depended on as a 
reliable agency for the revelation of God. Philos- 
ophizing has been a common task, or diversion, of 
man from the earliest age, and unless supported 
from a better source has been a blind leader of the 



THE PRIME REVELATION 55 

blind. The desert caves of Egypt, where lone her- 
mits were musing on man and his relation to "the 
divine essence/' the huts and shrines of India in 
which Buddhist bonzes and twice-born Brahmans 
meditated on the composition of matter and the 
nature of the soul, the porch and the garden of 
Athens where the sophists lounged and debated 
whether there were many gods, or one, or none at 
all ; and the monastic cells of mediaeval Europe in 
which shaven monks discussed realism and 
nominalism, and whether such words as ''man," or 
''tree," or "ship," were nothing but the names of 
^ class of objects, or were designations of objects 
representative of such classes, furnish ample 
illustration of the futility of the attempt to arrive 
at the essence of Being by abstract process of 
reasoning. The fundamental ideas of God and 
righteousness cannot be thus apprehended. When 
we mention philosophies, it is to recall the feuds 
of generations; this philosophy assailing that 
philosophy, both of which were soon to be super- 
seded by some other philosophy, which itself pres- 
ently was crowded out by some other still. The 
philosophical right of one age has been the mortal 
sin of the next. The God of one age has been well 
named the devil of the next. Consequently the 
search in the halls of philosophy and in the libra- 
ries of the philosophers for the knowledge of God, 
is as vain a task as hunting for sunshine in the 
depths of the Mammoth Cave. 

But, where the voice of nature is inadequate, 
and where human philosophy stands confusedly 
mumbling its vain contradictions, Christ speaks to 
the people, and through the open door of His self- 



56 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

revelation brings home to their apprehension the 
glory of the divine nature and of the divine pur- 
pose in the redemption of humanity. When Jesus 
told the people, 'Wo man knoweth who the Son is 
but the Father, and who the Father is but the Son, 
and he to whom the Son will reveal him," (Luke 
10:22) He was suggesting to them how they 
might expect God to be made known. And still 
later he offered the like suggestion, when at the 
Last Supper He said to Philip, ''He that hath seen 
me hath seen the Father." 

Through the medium of that expression, and of 
others akin to it, we are given assurance of the 
intensely personal nature of the Christian faith. 
It is warmer and more vital than any abstract 
nvstem of ethics that the mind can conceive ; for 
the abstract system, though as pure as the driven 
ciiow is quite likely to be as cold and unattractive 
as the snow. There is a sorrowful tale of the 
Spanish Grandee, who had been cast into a dun- 
peon by the king. His son raised an army for his 
deliverance, but before a battle Alphonso, the 
king, promised to release his prisoner. The day of 
deliverance arrived. From a distance the caval- 
cade could be seen winding its way through the 
mountain passes. At length the prisoner was dis- 
tinguished at the head of the troop supported 
deferentially in his saddle by a knight at the right 
and left. When the two detachments met, the son 
fell at his father's feet and reached up to clasp the 
father's hand, but 

"That hand was cold, a frozen thing, 
It fell from his like lead." 

The treacherous king had released the Count as he 



THE PRIME REVELATION 57 

had promised, but only to send a dead man to the 
arms of the living. Our faith reaches out no such 
hand of death. Instead, it proffers us a living 
Christ, who is Himself the incarnation of all win- 
some graces, and who in His own life and endear- 
ing sympathies makes clearly manifest the tender 
mercies and loving care of the Heavenly Father. 

The revelation of the Father which is made 
through Christ, the prime revelation, begins with 
the disclosure of the Divine personality. As Christ 
was Himself a sentient being, a personality, one 
who could think for Himself, who could plan and 
execute and communicate His thought to others, so 
the All-Father is a sentient Being, a Moral Ruler 
in a moral universe. This revelation of God in the 
face of Jesus Christ as a personality at a single 
stroke clears away the fog of doubts and heresies 
with which the Divine nature has been obscured 
and beclouded. 

One such ancient notion of the Deity was natur- 
alism, the identification of God with nature, and 
the making nature to be God, or at least all the 
God there is. That view was common in the early 
world, where man was facing the elemental 
forces; the rage of the tempest, the sweep of tor- 
rential floods, or the tremors and devastation of 
the volcano and the earthquake. 

Another error respecting God was fatalism, the 
concession to God of power to act, but to act only 
within limits that were predestined and predeter- 
mined, so that events for future ages were estab- 
lished from the beginning, and must ensue in their 
fateful course; a course which the divine power 
itself was helpless to alter or amend. An idea 



58 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

like this was underlying the earlier philosophies 
of Greece, it colored the thought of the Stoics, and 
it still lingers in the theology of the Moslem, who 
will not move to avert an impending plague, be- 
cause he would esteem it a cardinal sin to stand 
against the appointed way of God. 

A modern perversion of this notion is to be 
observed in the trust which some repose in second 
causes. Some of our modern theorizers in the 
course of their investigation of natural phenom- 
ena discover that many results, which formerly 
were regarded as acts of God, are to be attributed 
to natural causes, which work in obedience to 
natural law. The tempests roar, and the rains fall, 
through the combined action of the heat of the 
sun, of electrical currents moving in the clouds, 
and of atmospheric rivers, which have been set in 
motion by the rotation of the earth. When the 
rains fall to excess, or when there has been a 
withering drouth, the harvests fail over wide 
areas of territory. Cloud bursts in the mountain- 
ous tracts of China may cause her mighty rivers 
to overflow and drive thousands of helpless people 
to death by drowning or famine. Because some 
of these natural phenomena may be accounted for 
in this manner, there are some who conclude that 
similar secondary causes may account for all the 
processes of nature, and that in consequence no 
occasion is left to think of a First Great Cause at 
all ; of a First Great Cause who moves and regu- 
lates and controls all other causes. 

So might one argue on watching a modem 
engine as it drives a great ship through the 
stormy sea. He notes the fires under the boilers. 



THE PRIME REVELATION 59 

which account for the making of steam. He 
observes the pistons working back and forth in 
the massive cylinders under the pressure of the 
steam. He sees the connecting rods which drive 
the great cranks and turn the shaft, which propels 
the ship through the water. Here he has a whole 
series of second causes, and if he were to look no 
further he might declare that the ship was driving 
itself. But if so he has forgotten the engineer 
and the hand on the throttle that turned on the 
steam ! 

And the Christ who reveals the personality of 
God reveals the Mind and the Hand that starts 
and controls the mechanism of the universe. The 
God whom he shows us is not nature, is not a 
Being who is enslaved by an iron-clad determin- 
ism, is not dominated by second causes, is not an 
impersonal complexity of natural laws, but is a 
Divine Personality, who unveils himself in the 
person of Jesus, with the personal touch of the 
teacher to his disciples, and of friend with friend. 

Christ is representative of God in His never- 
failing righteousness. Righteousness has two 
forms : the first of which is in doing the right and 
in never doing the wrong; and second, in dis- 
countenancing anything less than the highest 
righteousness in the conduct of others. As one 
studies the life of Jesus he will remark that no one 
ever found any wrong of any kind attached to 
Him, and also that He never glozed over the 
wrong doing which others committed. In the 
presence of Jesus, to whom not so much as a sus- 
picion of evil could attach, evil always stood 
abashed and confounded. And in this implicit and 



60 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

inherent righteousness in His own example, Jesus 
^s displaying the everlasting righteousness of 
the Father. And because God Himself was the 
righteousness, the source and origin of all right- 
eousness, He could say to the Son, as in the epistle, 
'*Thy throne J O God, is forever and ever: a sceptre 
of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. 
''^'hou hast loved righteonsness and hated iniquity; 
therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee 
vnth the oil of gladness above thy fellows/' (Heb. 
1:29). 

Christ represents the friendliness of God. This 
v/as an attribute which the ancient world could 
hardly associate with its thought of Divinity. The 
gods of the heathen for the most part were por- 
trayed as monsters of cruelty, delighting in 
spreading death and calamity abroad, or else sit- 
ting in serene heedlessness of mortal complaints 
and miseries. And the prevailing idea of God 
among the Jews v/as but little better. If they did 
not impute to Him the reckless rage of the heathen 
divinities, they set Him far apart from humanity 
upon a lofty throne of exclusive isolation. But 
Jesus in revealing God makes it evident that He 
was in sympathy with man. When the Mastei 
first called His disciples, and later when He was 
going with them up and down in Judea and Gali- 
lee, He made Himself friendly with the people 
everywhere. Any one who came to Him with a 
question or a trouble had instant access to His 
presence. For the humblest suppliant He would 
break off in the midst of his most important dis- 
courses. Everywhere and always He was engaged 
in works of kindness and mercy. And while He 



THE PRIME REVELATION 61 

was busied with these, He insisted that His every 
deed of kindness, His every act of mercy, was 
from and through the Father. Hear Him declare 
to His disciples, ''The words that I speak unto 
you, I speak not of myself; hut the Father that 
dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.'' (John 14 : 10) . 
And His attitude toward the disciples was one of 
utter friendliness. They were with Him in the 
closest possible intimacy by day and by night; 
and so He says to them, '7 call you not servants, 
for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth, 
but I have called you friends; for all things that I 
have heard of my Father, I have made known unto 
you/' (John 15:15). And this friendliness of 
Jesus it is to be remembered is the friendliness of 
God. 

And Christ reveals God in His spirit of tender- 
ness and considerate compassion. For Christ was 
pre-eminently the helper of the people. Wherever 
there was urgent need, thither He turned His 
steps ; there His hand was extended with blessing. 
The pitifulness of God is displayed beautifully in 
the parable of the lost sheep. The ninety and nine 
in the fold were cared for sufficiently. It was the 
one lost sheep, the one that had wandered out on 
the mountain cold and bare, that he was searching 
for, and that when it was found He lifted and 
carried home in His bosom. That is God's attitude 
toward the sinner. God knows, and Christ knows, 
the difference between sin and the sinner. And 
God is seeking for the sinners, moving upon their 
hearts by His Holy Spirit, striving with them to 
bring them to repentance, and standing ready at 
the first sign of response to His call, to lift them 



62 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

up and restore them to the fellowship of His grace. 

And Christ gives us the freest representation of 
God in His revelation of the Divine Fatherhood. 
There was little like that in the Jewish notion of 
Divinity. To mention such a thought in connec- 
tion with God they felt was little short of sacri- 
lege. There was one of the names of God which 
they hardly dared to utter. When they spoke that 
name to another they whispered, and when they 
read that name in the reading of the Scripture 
lessons in the synagogue service, they always sub- 
stituted for it another name, which they consid- 
ered less significant and sacred. They thought of 
God in His sovereignty, as the High and Mighty 
Ruler of the Universe, ever distant and unap- 
proachable. But Christ the revealer brings God 
down toward the worshipper. When a man prays, 
Christ teaches him to say, ^'Our Father who art 
in heaven.'' 

The wanderer out in the fields of dissipation 
and sin is to know that there is a loving Father 
who desires his reclamation, and he can be told in 
the words of Jesus, ''It is not the will of your 
Father, which is in heaven, that one of these little 
ones should perish/' (Matt. 18 : 14) . It is a loving 
Father, who looks down from heaven, and whose 
all-embracing love not all the neglect, and error, 
and sin of His children can turn aside, and who 
out of the depths of His infinite love sent us His 
Son with the message of salvation. Just that was 
Christ's representation of God, the Prime Revela- 
tion, when at the outset of His ministry, in the 
interview with Nicodemus, he declared, ''For God 
so loved the world that he gave his only begotten 



THE PRIME REVELATION 63 

Son; that whosoever believeth in him should not 
perish, hut have everlasting life.'' (John 3: 16). 
Since Christ has presented God to the world in 
these intimate and loving ways, His prime releva- 
tion should be received with gladness and thanks- 
giving. As the child runs to meet the parent, and 
lifts its hand for the hand clasp of the father, so 
should God's earthly children, casting away all 
doubting and fears, come to the Divine Father, 
and rest in His love with the confidence of a per- 
fect trust. 



(I 



CELESTIAL COMPASSION 



IV. 

CELESTIAL COMPASSION 

THE difference between the world as God 
made it, and as man has altered it, is by no 
means to the credit of .mankind. Nature in 
its natural condition is ever and always harmoni- 
ously beautiful. The precipitous mountain, the 
rolling prairie land carpeted with flowers, the 
verdant islets studding some inland sea are per- 
fection itself in their individual charm, and they 
appeal to whatever artistic sense we possess. But 
when we compare what God has done for man 
with what man has been doing for himself we 
have even more occasion for our pride to take a 
sudden fall. For with all its nobility and strength, 
humanity abounds with frailty and weakness. 
How hard is the path of the transgressor ! What 
retributions and scourges beset him! What 
plagues and penalties and fell diseases combine to 
distress and destroy him! 

And yet, with these hindrances to transgression, 
how easy the wandering astray! Right: that 
means self-control and self-restraint. It means 
resistance to evil suggestion. It means the exer- 
cise of good judgment and holding a close rein 
over impulse and passion. To stand by the right 
in an even course demands decision of character 
and long schooling. Taken in the mass, men 
are stumblers. Whoever takes half a day to 



68 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

sit in the police court will wonder at the fatal 
facility with which the many walk into trouble 
with eyes wide open. What foolishness of temp- 
tation! What pettiness of theft! What abysses 
of degeneracy in thought and conduct ! 

And how much better is the prospect when one 
turns to the higher social scale? In the parable a 
self-centered Pharisee once thanked God that he 
was so much better than other men, one of whom 
was close at hand. No doubt about it that he was 
considered more respectable, but probably only 
because he was more successful in hiding his mis- 
doings. What lying he indulged in was artistic 
and not readily to be detected. He was no burglar, 
breaking into other people's houses. True enough ; 
but what of the likelihood that he was robbing the 
widow and the fatherless under the forms of law? 
How much better in that case was he than the 
burglar after all? That Pharisee enjoyed con- 
fessing the faults of his neighbor. But that was 
an infirmity also. When the time of final judg- 
ment comes it is highly probable that in the list 
of human ills that men must answer for, the sin 
of faultfinding will have place near the top of the 
citation. And yet how prevalent is the censorious 
spirit ! How the rich grumble at the shif tlessness 
of the poor, and how the poor get back at the rich 
by grumbling at their luxuriousness and prodi- 
gality. Prosperity turns up her dainty nose at 
poverty, and vice sneeringly accuses virtue as 
being just like herself, barring a thin veneer of 
propriety. Every class takes its fling at every 
other class, and if it can find nothing else to find 
fault about it can cover the whole range of per- 



CELESTIAL COMPASSION 69 

sonal characteristics, and score the fit of a gar- 
ment or the way a neighbor carries his head. Ten- 
nyson in his Maud touches upon this weakness: 

"Ah, yet we cannot be kind to each other here for an hour. 
We whisper and hint and chuckle and grin at a brother's 

shame: 
However we brave it out, we men are a little breed." 

But these self-same traits of humanity which 
shame us, and for which we show keen aversion, 
whenever encountered in others, aroused in the 
Savior the tenderest interest and compassion. In 
that incident of the maniac, who made his home 
in the tombs. His heart was drawn to the lone man 
who was driven to make such a place his habita- 
tion, and whose mad ravings had long been the 
terror of the countryside. What a repulsive crea- 
ture he was ! A giant in stature, of such unusual 
strength that he could tear asunder the iron chains 
with which the authorities sought to bind him; 
gaunt, and with hair and beard matted from long 
neglect, what could the Savior have to do with 
such as he? What indeed would the world have 
in common with the outcast? The world prefers 
to consort with the successful man ; with the man 
who has knowledge enough, and force enough, to 
make his way alone, to stand on his own feet and 
ask favors of nobody. Were it not preferable, so 
the world would ask, for this man, and for society, 
if he were to perish at once, since he must perish 
soon in any event? 

But no. That was not the way with the Savior 
at all. Despite all the hatefulness of the man 
Jesus extends to him the kindly hand. He ad- 
dresses him with the compassionate word which 



70 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

soothes his frenzy and adds the word of healing 
which restores the man to society, to his family, 
and to himself. ''Go home to thy friends/' so 
said the Master, ''and tell them how great things 
the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compos- 
sion on thee/' (Mark 5 : 19). 

Compassion, the caring for and helping others, 
is the predominating feature, the outstanding fact 
in the ministry of Jesus. Of course Christ exhib- 
its wisdom, and power, and righteousness, all of 
them unsurpassed and unsurpassable; but even 
more prominently than these, like the sunlight 
before which the stars fade in the heavens, shines 
out the Savior's divine compassion. From first 
to last all his acts were radiant with pity and sym- 
pathy. At Bethlehem the angels sang of peace 
and good-will, and at the closing scene, other 
angels in the gloom of Calvary witnessed His gen- 
tle mercy to the malefactor, and heard that match- 
less prayer for the persecutors, "Father, forgive 
them, for they knoiv not tvhat they do/' (Luke 
23:34). 

The compassion of Jesus was all the more 
divine, since it displayed no prejudice or partial- 
ity. Men are prone to raise distinctions of family 
or race. They indulge much speech of the brother- 
hood of humanity, but in practice they incline to 
treat it as a splendid ideal, to be extolled at a dis- 
tance, but when near at hand to be applied accord- 
ing to the circumstances and momentary conveni- 
ence. The history of the world shows little of the 
brotherhood of humanity, but much of wrang- 
lings, and struggles and wars between neighbor- 
hoods and nations. Some tribes and nations have 



CELESTIAL COMPASSION 71 

made fighting their chief business, and have relied 
on the sword for their sustenance precisely as 
others have relied on the plow, or the flock, or the 
factory. When the whole truth is told, if it ever 
can be, respecting the abuses which the white man 
has perpetrated on the black man, the red man, 
the brown man, and the yellow man, it will con- 
vulse the heart of the world. What can we say 
of the horrors of the middle passage, of the auc- 
tion block, of the rice fields, of the cypress swamps 
and the bay of the blood hound? Whoever 
knows of these occurrences would fain blot them 
from remembrance, but they can never be blotted 
out. Nor may we take to our souls the consola- 
tion that all such enormities may be relegated to 
some untaught and far distant past. Our own 
generation has been startled by the desperate cry 
of the million starved and massacred in Armenia, 
and we have heard the tramp of the legions that 
ransacked and desolated at their sweet will the 
cities and out-lying districts of Belgium and 
Northern France. A favorite doctrine with those 
who have filled the seats of the mighty is the dic- 
tum that the many have no rights which the pow- 
erful are bound to respect. It is a doctrine that 
dies hard, but it is dying, and it was the hand of 
the Christ that struck the mortal blow. His main 
care was never for any special group or class of 
men, whether of a city, or a tribe, or an occupa- 
tion ; but for all men as men, and particularly for 
the man who was suffering. What a lesson of gen- 
uine humanity He taught all those people who de- 
light themselves in their exclusiveness, the Phar- 
isees, the separatists, the four hundred, when He 



72 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

related that parable of the Good Samaritan! 
When He reached the end of that tale, His hearer, 
the Pharisee, was forced to the admission that the 
hated Samaritan, the man with whom the Jew 
would not sit at table or even engage in trade, was 
a nobler soul than his own priest or Levite. 

Jesus was compassionate to the woman of Syro- 
Phoenecia, when she came asking help for her 
daughter who was dying. She was of an alien 
race, but that did not concern Him or hinder His 
listening to her appeal. For He saw in her, not 
the stranger, not the foreigner, but the woman in 
distress, and so the relief which He gave was in- 
stant and complete. With that act He shattered 
every wall of prejudicial exclusiveness and taught 
His church that Jew or Greek, bond or free, cir- 
cumcized or uncircumcised, barbarian and Scyth- 
ian, were all on the same level in the sight of God. 

And as He thus set aside every distinction of 
race origin, so He overturned all barriers of posi- 
tion and condition. Rich or poor, popular or un- 
popular; all were alike to Him, and He was the 
friend and helper of them all. Blind men, impo- 
tent men, lepers, publicans and sinners, social 
outcasts; all who came to Him were able to tell 
afterward how Christ had compassion on them. 
No life was so blighted by mistake or misfortune 
that it could not feel the cheer of the Master's 
voice, and rejoice in His gentle sympathy which 
soothed every sorrow. 

Christ's attitude toward the sinner was in strik- 
ing contrast with the spirit of His age, as mani- 
fested among the Jews and all others also. It is 
understood that of all things which God must 



CELESTIAL COMPASSION 73 

abominate, and which Christ was set to overthrow 
and destroy, the chief of all was the spirit and 
domination of sin. Sin: that is fighting against 
God. Sin : that is open defiance of God. Sin : that 
is blocking the purposes of the divine Providence. 
Sin: that is destroying in man the forces that 
would make for his salvation. Surely Christ in 
His pure nature must have realized the nature of 
sin and have recoiled from its presence as from a 
mortal plague. And yet, though Christ hated the 
sin. He loved the sinner. There is one scene in the 
Gospel story which proves this beyond the shadow 
of a doubt. One day there came to Him a com- 
pany of men, rage filling their hearts, and bring- 
ing a woman against whom they asked His instant 
judgment. They said she had been caught in the 
act which disgraced her womanhood, and by the 
law she should be stoned to death. For this they 
asked him to pronounce the sentence. Poor soul ! 
What chance had she, all shame-faced and broken 
hearted? Who knows her history, what tempta- 
tions she suffered, what snares were craftily set 
to compass her ruin? Scandalized society knew 
nothing of that and cared still less. But what 
a spectacle was that; the angry accusers, the 
shrinking woman, and the silent Christ, who was 
stooping there and writing with His finger in the 
sand! What was the writing? No need for 
speculation about that, for His main concern at 
that moment was not the writing, but the woman ; 
for He was so lovingly compassionate that He 
would not add to the sinner's grief by so much 
as looking her in the face. He counted them all 
as sinners, the accusers as well as the accused. It 



74 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

is an old trick for the wicked to pose in the atti- 
tude of innocence. The thief when he is hunted is 
wont to shout "Stop thief!" more vociferously 
than honest men. Rogues are always suspicious 
of roguery. Judgment commonly falls most 
harshly from lips. All of them were sinners, and 
Christ looks at none of them. Still writing there 
on the ground He calmly says, ''Let him that is 
without sin among you cast the first stone at her J' 
How infinitely gentle and yet how infinitely 
scorching that word! And those men felt it so, 
and they began filing out one by one. The judg- 
ment throne of conscience in every bosom had 
declared its sentence, and soon every man had 
gone. And when Christ and the woman were left 
alone, He asked of her kindly, ''Where are those 
thine accusers?'' When she replied that they had 
departed. He bade her go also and sin no more. 
Amazing the delicacy of Christ's compassion. 
Surely many hearts must have been won for vir^ 
tue and truth that day. 

This wonderful compassion of Jesus is to be 
comprehended only when it is observed that it 
was exercised toward man as man ; toward every 
man as being the child of God. Christ's ocean of 
compassion overswept every side of humanity, as 
the waters fit themselves to every outline of the 
shore. His mission was for the saving of men. 
He came to fan the latent spark of goodness in 
every heart and kindle it to a conquering flame. 
He understood that the soul shrinks from harsh- 
ness and that the best solvent of stubborn pride 
and waywardness is love. And so He loved 
everything that was human. Then and now every 



CELESTIAL COMPASSION 75 

child of God, even the one who has marred God's 
image by weakness and sin, may lay claim to the 
compassion of Jesus; a compassion which will 
meet every need of the changed and penitent soul. 
In the study of the compassionate Christ it is 
to be observed that compassion was a necessity of 
His nature. His love, which was the love of 
heaven, held no contaminations of selfish fear. 
What frequently hinders men from following the 
counsel of their hearts is that their heads are cal- 
culating consequences. They dread to be too char- 
itable, lest the calls for charity will make them 
bankrupt. They may not be too helpful, lest some 
one suspect them of feeling more sympathy with 
the sin than with the sinner. Then also they 
figure up profit and loss. Much of our boasted 
science is utilitarian, too much so for the encour- 
agement of sentiment. It has commendation for 
the survival of the fittest, which properly inter- 
preted means the weak to the wall. When Sir 
Walter Scott lost his favorite dog, he set a head- 
stone over his grave. No doubt not a few shrewd 
people of that region deplored such waste of good 
Scotch granite. And the same class would deplore 
the waste of sentiment with men. If it is sound doc- 
trine that only the fit should survive, then let the 
weak go on getting weaker, and let the sinful by 
help of their sins destroy themselves, so that the 
race of evil-doers may indulge themselves to utter 
destruction. But that is not God's way with sin- 
ners. No fear with Him of compromising His 
position. He has a care for His people. He would 
save the weak, and have the strong exert their 
strength in helping the weak. ''Herein," so says 



76 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

Jesus, 'Hs my Father glorified, that ye bear micch 
fruitr (John 15: 8). And the fruit that He 
desires is the reclamation of manhood, the turning 
of sinners to righteousness. It is a wonderful 
thing to create an Adam from the dust of the 
ground, to take the *'red earth'' and give it the 
proportions of a man, with all physical and moral 
powers and capacities, to make the man in the 
image of God; but it is a still more wonderful 
thing to recreate the man, to turn the skeptic from 
his scoffing to the utterance of prayer, to change 
the heart which has been a nest of vile imaginings, 
so that it has become the haven of purity and 
goodness. 

And Christ is compassionate because He accepts 
to the full the ideal of brotherhood. Paul follow- 
ing Jesus declared that God ''hath made of one 
blood all nations of men/^ (Acts 17: 26). In His 
universal prayer the Savior taught the unity of 
race and the unity of faith, when He 
bade His disciples say, ''Our Father, who 
art in heaven.^' When He prayed for Him- 
self He said, "Father/' This was no less than 
the acknowledgment of kinship between Christ 
and all humanity. Paul gives the thought further 
expression in the pertinent passage, "For both he 
that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified are 
all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to 
call them brethren/' (Heb. 2: 11). What is the 
manifest conclusion from this thought of kinship 
between Christ and humanity? What happens in 
the home when a brother has been tempted and 
follows some evil course? Will the family denounce 
him and turn him off, washing their hands of him 



CELESTIAL COMPASSION 77 

completely? Not if there is real love in that 
family circle. If real love is actuating the hearts 
of the rest in that home, they will plead with him 
and strive to bring him back to the right path. 
And this they will do, not once nor twice, but so 
long as there remains a shadow of hope for his 
saving. And Christ loves men. His heart reaches 
out to them, no matter how lost and degraded they 
have become. And so He puts forth every effort 
to bring them to salvation. 

Christ is compassionate still more because He 
sees the wonderful possibilities of which any soul 
may be capable. Imagine a carrier dove that has 
ventured toward the claws of its enemy the cat. 
How soon is its plumage ruffled, are its wings torn 
and bleeding, and death is staring it in the face. 
But some friendly hand comes to its rescue, binds 
up its wounds and smoothes out the ruffled pin- 
ions. What joy when it spreads its wings once 
more in the upper air, and is free to pursue its 
own career untrammeled and unafraid! So it is 
with the soul of man. Sin is its direst foe. Sin 
tears it ; sin mangles it ; sin would destroy it. But 
when once clear of its captor and alive unto God, 
it may become fit companion for saints and angels 
in the glory of Paradise. 

The Compassionate Christ in His compassionate 
life has set the example for all Christians. The 
great Flavel once said, "The soul is the life of the 
body." If this be so, we may say that faith is the 
life of the soul, and that Christ is the life of faith. 
On that basis all advance toward faith lies along 
the path of Christlikeness. That signifies doing 
His will, feeling with His sympathies, growing 



78 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

into the spirit of tender and kindly helpfulness, 
and having the whole heart with its every throb 
expressive of Christian gentleness and love. 
Blessed such a life, for it is the assurance of peace 
and of overcoming the world. 



CHRIST'S NOVEL WAY WITH SINNERS 



i 

1 •' 



V. 
CHRIST'S NOVEL WAY WITH SINNERS 

CHRIST was the most successful reformer 
that the world has known. Where others 
have planned for a day, He planned for a 
day and for eternity. Where others planned to 
no avail, He planned and accomplished. He set 
in motion far-reaching revolutions in method and 
conduct, and their influence still abides. He 
encountered some of the worst of men, men who 
have been deaf to every voice of affection, who 
had spurned the warnings of conscience, and who 
seemed dead to the common instincts of humanity, 
and these men listened to Him with the result that 
their lives were reconstructed altogether. And 
that kind of work, instituted by our Lord two 
thousand years ago, has been moving on, extend- 
ing in ever widening circles, till it has altered the 
face of civilization. If now in this twentieth cen- 
tury there are anywhere efforts for the ameliora- 
tion of long-standing abuses and for improve- 
ments in social organization, it is evident that 
they have had their inspiration from Him, and 
have been following His ways. And also, wherever 
society has suffered the miscarriage of its plans 
for the reclamation of the erring, it will be found 
that its most serious mistakes have resulted from 
clinging to its own projects and doggedly refusing 
to take lessons in these matters from the Master. 



82 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

One way for reform which has been the favorite 
with governments for ages has been the applica- 
tion of force. It is conceded that in some instances 
force is justified. As the ultimate resort reliance 
may be placed on the strong hand. When a for- 
eign foe sends its ships and legions to invade our 
country it is the bugle call of patriotism that 
summons the loyal citizen to arms for the national 
defence. Similarly in case of riot or serious 
domestic disturbance any trifling with the mob is 
to insure the worse disorder. The occasion 
demands a show of authority, and that of the kind 
that will inspire law breakers with respect for 
orderly government. 

But the application of force as an agency for 
the promotion of moral reform is ill advised, since 
harsh measures as a rule have the tendency to 
harden and brutalize both the offender and those 
v/ho are seeking to correct him. There was a 
period in England when her judges were sending 
her minor offenders to the gallows. Stealing a 
sucking pig, or a silk handkerchief, at that period 
laid one liable to the extreme penalty, and the con- 
sequence of such severity in the administration 
of justice v/as the hardening and emboldening of 
the whole criminal class. The commission of the 
minor offence was sufficient to make life a forfeit 
to the law. Do what a man might, the penalty 
could be no worse. It was from that date that the 
grim proverb, '*As well be hung for a sheep as a 
lamb,'' became current. Because many people 
thought in that manner their common conviction 
assumed this expression. All over England skele- 
tons of offenders who had been hanged were sus- 



CHRIST'S NOVEL WAY WITH SINNERS 83 

pended in chains, the foul odor everywhere cor- 
rupting the air, and helping to produce pestilence; 
but that terrible sight was no deterrent to crime, 
for the more that the public mind became accus- 
tomed to such horrors, the more reckless the bad 
became in their wickedness. 

When it becomes evident that no headway can 
be made against sin by stem measures applied in 
excess, society is sometimes foolish enough to run 
to the opposite extreme of giving free rein to sin, 
imagining possibly that it can be cured by suffer- 
ing the scourges of its own mischiefs. Sometimes 
parents adopt this easy-going discipline in raising 
a family, a plan which may be characterized in 
the familiar phrase of "letting things slide." The 
infant must have everything he calls for, else he 
will hold his breath till he is black in the face. The 
boys must grow up like wild colts, for to restrain 
them in any respect is too troublesome. If they 
wrangle and cuff one another in the public street; 
if they throw stones at the passing horses in sum- 
mer, or snowball pedestrians in winter,, what else 
is to be expected of them? How else can they 
expend their exuberant spirits? In such manner 
we have a hoodlum class growing up ; a class that 
is self-indulgent, idle, vulgar, and brutal; a class 
thai lines the curbing in the cities, where it insults 
respectable citizens ; a class that crowds the sta- 
tion houses in winter; a class that lights its pipe 
in the farmer's bam or under his haystack, and 
flings its matches about and doesn't care a brass 
nickel whether his buildings catch fire or not; a 
class that terrorizes lone women ; a class that piles 
obstructions on the railway track in its crazy 



84 CHPwIST IN WORD AND WORK 

greed for plunder, and does not seem to suffer a 
single twinge of conscience for the scores that 
its recklessness may hurl to sudden death. And 
though all these sad consequences are occurring 
daily before our eyes, the same thing goes right 
on unchecked. Instead of the parents governing 
their children, the children govern their parents 
and come to maturity without ever having learned 
self-control. The lazy tramp overawes the coun- 
try and nothing effectual is done for his suppres- 
sion. And so society suffers and great evils wax 
worse and worse. 

Another way of the world in moral correction 
which has little to recommend it, isi the adoption 
of passive goodness, the choice of a life of purity 
and respectability, but all for one's self. Possibly 
there is in such case a vague notion that the excel- 
lence of one's demeanor will exert a beneficial 
influence upon those who are less refined, and so 
incline them unconsciously toward goodness. But 
that attitude is altogether inadequate for the 
reclamation of sinners. Goodness as a social fac- 
tor can never content itself with mere goodness. 
The church does not fill the measure of its useful- 
ness by camping out on the border of iniquity and 
there practicing its dress parade of worship and 
observance of the ordinances. When the church 
has been organized and officered, and duly equip- 
ped with its preacher, and its choir, and its 
deacons, and its Sunday School, and all the allied 
societies and committees of every class, it has sim- 
ply gotten itself ready to begin the campaign. In 
some parts of the west they are plagued with a 
new weed, the Russian thistle. It grows to be taller 



CHRIST'S NOVEL WAY WITH SINNERS 85 

than a man. It spreads itself out in a great bunch 
of prickly luxuriance and fecundity. When it has 
once established itself there is no end to its 
spreading in every direction. Imagine a field cov- 
ered with such thistles, every clump branching 
out into a dozen or more thistle balls, every thistle 
ball carrying its two to three hundred winged 
seeds to be wafted broadcast by every wanton 
breeze, and then think of a farmer coming up and 
building his cabin on the edge of that thistle patch, 
and planting a neat little^ garden there by way of 
giving a good example to the thistles. That is a 
situation that calls for something more heroic 
than a good example. To subdue that rank over- 
growth of agricultural contamination the man 
must pull off his coat and go to plowing and root 
grubbing. And it is much the same with the 
church in its campaign against the rank weeds of 
error and sin. That is no child's play and de- 
mands the best energies and the best appliances of 
spiritual agriculture. When the churches become 
alive to their social obligation and get right down 
to practical ways of character building and char- 
acter reclamation; when they emulate the spirit 
and example of Jesus in their labors with what we 
sometimes term "the submerged classes," they 
will exercise a broader influence and will stir all 
our communities to nobler purpose. 

The Gospels furnish us a fine example of our 
Lord's novel way with sinners in that interview 
with the rich man who made him a banquet, to 
which came the woman who washed His feet with 
her tears. Because of her loving action that day 
the Lord extended her His forgiveness. And yet 



86 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

while) doing so He said to the rich man, who was 
criticizing her, ''Her sins which are many are for- 
given her/' (Luke 7 : 47) . 

In this expression we may notice the Divine 
truthfulness. Christ does not forget that sin is 
sinful, and whoever commits sin is a sinner. And 
this is the regular attitude in the moral govern- 
ment of God. It is the attitude which pervades 
the teaching of the Bible. From first to last, from 
the transgression in Eden to the declaration in the 
Revelation that nothing can enter heaven that 
defileth or maketh a lie, sin is portrayed as vile, 
hateful, and abominable. God cannot look upon 
sin with the least degree of allowance. A familiar 
symbol for sin in the Scripture is leprosy, which 
is one of the most repulsive among human dis- 
eases. When the Scripture likens sin to leprosy 
the intention is to mark it as corruption, as 
putridity of the soul. 

There are philosophies of the hour which take 
issue with that view. In their easy going way they 
would make sin out to be a sort of bodily humor, a 
mere bodily disorder; and according to this fine 
theory when the sinner leaves his body behind him 
at death, he casts off with it all his bodily tempta- 
tions and evil inclinations, as one slips out of a 
useless garment; and that he then has his soul 
pure and clean of all moral defilement, so that he 
has become as innocent as an angel. But God's 
Book does not present the matter in that conveni- 
ent light. That Book pronounces the severest 
penalties against sin — penalties, unless the sin has 
been repented of, which run on into, and affect 
the standing of the sinner in the eternal world. 



CHRIST'S NOVEL WAY WITH SINNERS 87 

And we know very well that sin as a disorder 
strikes its roots into tissues that are deeper down 
than the body. We have witnessed rages and 
revenges which have burst up from the innermost 
soul. The venom of sin runs deep, and if it has its 
course it will presently make the whole head sick 
and the whole heart faint. 

While the Scripture is so explicit respecting the 
hatefulness of sin in its ultimate nature, it is 
equally frank and outspoken respecting its conse- 
quences. These are altogether evil and not at all 
to be desired. My Lord never spoke a favorable 
word for the fruits of wickedness, and much that 
He said of them was emphatic of their horror. Of 
offences He declared, ''Woe unto that man by 
whom the offence cometh.'' (Matt. 18:7). If the 
tares of evil grow up they may grow till the har- 
vest, but they are to be burned in the fire. If one 
lives wickedly and leads others into wickedness, it 
were better for him if a millstone were hung about 
his neck and if he were cast into the depths of the 
sea. 

And Jesus who teaches the truth about sin 
exalts the beauty of righteousness. All commen- 
dation carries with itself the sting of reprobation. 
For only those who deserve commendation are to 
receive it, and those who fail to receive commen- 
dation lie under blame. Much may be learned by 
contrasts. Light is not darkness, and by the same 
token every word of blessing in the beatitudes is 
a warning; a blessing to the pure in heart, a bless- 
ing to the poor in spirit, a blessing to the merciful ; 
but conceding that, it also signifies sorrow and 
bitterness to the vile, to the haughty, and to the 



88 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

merciless of the earth. The Sermon on the Mount 
is a treasury of instruction. There are men who 
are not first class samples as Christians who will 
excuse their course by saying that they take the 
Sermon on the Mount as the guide of their lives. 
Those who actually take that Sermon as guide are 
to be congratulated. Such are not far from the 
Kingdom of God. He who takes the Sermon on 
the Mount as his guide will be so firm and uncom- 
promising in goodness that the men of the world 
will be for persecuting him. He will be hungering 
and thirsting after righteousness to such degree 
that to every eye he will be filled with righteous- 
ness. He would never give houseroom to an im- 
pure thought. He would never fret and fume 
about troubles that the morrow might bring. Be- 
fore all else he would be seeking after God and the 
righteousness of God. It is a splendid thing to be 
living in the Sermon on the Mount, for whoever 
dwells there openly and unreservedly is a disciple 
of the Lord. 

Jesus' way with sin was to apply the same kind 
of rule to specific cases. Divine truth attests its 
divinity by its being the same in all aspects, the 
same in the announcements of the law, the same in 
the concrete, in the dealing of the law with indi- 
vidual men. In this respect we remark how far 
man's ways differ from the ways of God. It is the 
common^ thing with us to frame the sternest kind 
of codes against evil doing, and then when some 
evil doer, who is connected with us somehow — ^who 
belongs to our family, or to our social set — is 
brought to book for the matter, we set ourselves 
to ease up on the law, to pull its teeth, to make a 



CHRIST'S NOVEL WAY WITH SINNERS 89 

special exemption for the benefit of our pet 
offender. Some one has been forging a check. 
Too bad, but clap him in jail. But he is Mr. So- 
and-So's brother-in-law. Yes, that makes a dif- 
ference. In that case we must not act too rashly. 
Poor lad! He must have been sorely tempted. 
Perhaps we can get up a petition to have him par- 
doned out. 

It is by such practices, by having one kind of 
law for the stranger, and another kind of law 
for our kindred, or for our special friends, that 
the administration of the law is brought into con- 
tempt. Very fortunate it is that the administra- 
tion of the divine law is not committed to human 
hands, that it is in the hands of the just Judge 
who worketh righteousness. 

Recently a prominent member of a fashionable 
church in criticism of some plain Bible teaching 
remarked, ''We don't permit any of that kind of 
theology in our church." In his congregation they 
were following a special by-path to Paradise, and 
they had put a stopper on the preacher's mouth, so 
that he would not mention any other path. They 
were managing so as to grind the edge off from 
God's denunciation of sin. They were doing in a 
round-about way what Protestants have been com- 
plaining of the Romanists for doing directly. 
Protestants lay the charge at the door of Rome 
that she compounds sin by her pretence of par- 
doning sin, great or small, in exchange for money 
that is paid to the priest. But the Romanist who 
is up-to-date can get it back on some of the 
Protestants that they are compounding sin by 
altering the force of the Scriptural denunciations 



90 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

against sin; that we are practicing under two 
religious codes; under a strict and stringent code 
for the friendless and the stranger, and under a 
code that is more elastic and easy-going to be 
applied for ourselves or for those in whom we are 
taking special interest. 

Nothing of that sort is to be discovered with 
Christ, or with the Gospel which He teaches. His 
firm hands hold the even balance, and He makes 
the rule precisely the same, whether it be in some 
statement of the Divine purpose, or in his treat- 
ment of the individual offender. This is clearly 
to be seen in the instance of the woman, of whom 
mention has already been made. She had shown 
a tender heart. She seemed to have some premoni- 
tion of the approaching tragedy, and she was 
weeping as she knelt and embraced the Savior's 
feet. With what a flood of surging love she wiped 
those feet with her flowing hair. 

But what effect has this action of her's upon 
Christ's estimate of her past record? He does not 
permit it to gloze over anything, to conceal any- 
thing, to alter anything. The Lord does not abate 
one jot of the fact that she has been a sinner. Nor 
does He palliate her wrong-doing as if it had 
been a trifle, for He says, ''Her sins which are 
many.'' In other words. He characterizes her as 
a notable sinner, who had been committing sin 
again and again. To speak of her in that manner, 
before her face and in the face of the assembled 
company at the banquet, was very plain speaking. 

And our Lord is quite as plain and truthful in 
dealing with Simon. Simon was his host. He had 
spread this feast in honor of the illustrious visitor. 



CHRIST'S NOVEL WAY WITH SINNERS 91 

Yet when the host began murmuring in his heart 
because of the woman, Jesus straitway showed 
him his true condition. ''Simon," so the Master 
put it in other terms, "Simon, do not disturb your- 
self about the woman. Turn your mind toward 
yourself. You are too cold-blooded, too ceremoni- 
ous. The woman is better than you suppose. With 
all her sins I can see that she has the loving spirit. 
But Simon, though you invited me to your house, 
you did not bring the water to wash my feet. You 
did not give me the customary kiss of welcome. 
You had no oil to pour on my head. But wherein 
you fell short, the woman was kinder. She washed 
my feet with her tears and wiped them with the 
hairs of her head." That was a gentle rebuke to 
Simon. Every word of praise for the woman was 
reproof for the Pharisaical Simon. 

What the Lord was doing that day was all for 
the best. Men need the open light of truth, and it 
is good for them to see themselves as they are to 
enable them to repent of their errors. Let there 
be truth, then, though it be a scourge for indif- 
ference, and a censure for all shortcomings. 

But it is well to consider how gracious was the 
Master's bearing toward the woman. Though He 
cannot put aside her past. His expression to her 
is kindness and tenderness. It is not hard to pic- 
ture the love light that was gleaming from His 
eyes when He pronounced her sins forgiven. 

He who so readily recognized the love spirit was 
Himself the incarnation of love. All who entered 
into His presence felt this instinctively. It was 
not needful to await the spoken word, for love 
cannot be concealed. It reveals itself in the aff ec- 



92 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

tionate glance and in the softened tone, whose 
every cadence is a caress. 

It is such reality of love that touches the way- 
ward heart. When in the home some favored son 
goes wild, in nine cases out of ten he will conceal 
his fault from the father, and when he opens his 
heart, if at all, it will be to the mother. The secret 
for this is not hard to find. The father represents 
rectitude,; the straight line, the straight walk, the 
severity of the law. The mother represents ten- 
derness and helpfulness. The father resents the 
stain that has been put upon the family name; 
but the mother thinks more of leading her boy 
back to the right path. The father stands for 
the letter of the law, the mother for the outreach- 
ing mercy of the Gospel. And so the boy comes 
and sits down with mother and they talk it over. 
She listens to his confession. She tells him that 
he has acted very wrong, but that she loves him 
and hopes for him and will help him still. And 
the sweetness of that mother love lifts the soul 
of that boy to gratitude and repentance. And 
such mother love, one of the most precious of all 
earthly gifts, is a teacher of the Lord's love, and 
of the Lord's novel way with the sinner. 

There is another instance in the case of the 
woman of Samaria who met Jesus at the well. The 
disciples were averse to His having any speech 
with her, for they were agreed as to her being a 
sinner. If they could have acted at their own 
pleasure, they would have despatched her about 
her business in short order. But Christ looked 
deeper and saw the chance of another soul to be 
saved for the Kingdom. So He sat and talked 



CHRIST'S NOVEL WAY WITH SINNERS 93 

with her and as they chatted there together He 
won her confidence. When she went home she 
told her neighbors about the Master, and they be- 
came interested, and Philip was sent for, and out 
of it all there came in due time the church in 
Samaria. 

So Christ showed a novel way with Zacchaeus. 
We can hardly call him a sinner, but the Jews had 
no liking for him, and because of his business con- 
nections they set him quite outside their society 
and their sympathies. If Luke had known such a 
word when he was writing his Gospel, he would 
have said that the Jews had laid a boycott on 
Zacchaeus. When Christ saw that he was deso- 
late, and alone, and sorrowful. He addressed him 
in the friendliest way, and honored him by telling 
him that He was coming to dine at his house. 

Under the influence of such instances and ex- 
amples the Christian of to-day may conclude, 
while he is to be frank and honest in his hostility 
to sin, that he still should be kind and hopeful and 
affectionate with persons who are not yet Chris- 
tians, and also with any who have fallen in the 
way of temptation. Too many of us permit our- 
selves to become discouraged in our Christian 
work. When we start in to interest a friend in 
religion, if we fail to receive immediately the 
encouraging response, our pride is wounded and 
we throw up the task as hopeless. 

Christ is the teacher of perseverance in a good 
cause, and of the profit of winsomeness that sim- 
ply refuses to be denied. In the quest for souls 
we should be as importunate as the commercial 
traveler who is determined to sell his goods, or as 



94 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

the life insurance man who camps out on your 
doorstep till he sells you his policy. If the friend 
we are striving for has some stain on his record, 
that is all the better reason for patience and the 
tender entreaty. Somewhere, somehow, there is 
an open door to that soul, and ours is the duty to 
find that door. 

"Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter, 
Feelings lie buried that grace may restore." 

In the Scripture we have the record of Saul, a 
most discouraging case. He was a hater of the 
light, a persecutor of Jesus, a destroyer of Chris- 
tians. But the Redeemer came to his heart, and 
when he was won he became the foremost cham- 
pion of the cross. 

In South Africa there lived a native chief, 
Africaner, the head of the tribe of the Namaquas, 
who was such a valiant fighter, such a military 
genius, that he was called the Napoleon of that 
region. At the head of his armies he carried fire 
and destruction for hundreds of miles and he 
made his name a terror everywhere. One of the 
missionaries said of him that he was *'a monster, 
whom neither religion nor government can re- 
strain or subdue," and so a force of soldiers was 
sent to rid the country of such a plague. And 
yet when that savage chief heard the story of the 
loving Christ, he was transformed and became a 
consistent Christian, a character which he sus- 
tained as long as he lived. 

Out in the Mississippi Valley there lived a man 
who for twenty-five years was a gambler and 
blackleg. He was taught to gamble when he was 
seven years old. For the twenty-five years that 



CHRIST'S NOVEL WAY WITH SINNERS 95 

he was a professional gambler, he indulged in all 
manner of gentlemanly vices, as they were termed 
in that period. He had an interest in two faro 
banks in the city of Louisville, which brought him 
in fifteen hundred dollars a month. He reckoned 
on that income securely, for the odds in a gam- 
bling place are always in favor of the bank. This 
many was invited one day by a minister of the 
gospel to come and hear him preach. 

''But, Sir," said he, ''I am a gambler.'' 

The minister put his hand tenderly on his 
shoulder and replied, "My brother, I hope that 
meeting may be a blessing to both of us. Come 
down and hear me preach." 

He went to the meeting. He heard the message 
of saving grace, and that night he yielded his 
heart to the Savior. In his new life he suffered 
many drawbacks and tribulations, but he over- 
came them all and ultimately became a preacher 
of the Gospel himself. 

Work like that is work for the Master. It pays 
the best of dividends, for the reward is everlast- 
ing. It is a comfortable work, for it is making 
the world a better place to live in. And it is a 
joyful work, for it insures the smile of the 
redeeming Lord, who Himself loved to save 
sinners. 



THE PEACEMAKER 



VI. 

THE PEACEMAKER 

THERE is one God ; one, no less ; one, no more ; 
this is the solid truth, the bed rock founda- 
tion of true religion. It is One God, no 
less ; for man is not to worship nothing. If God 
is not, there can be no religion. We speak the 
voice of prayer, because we know that the heav- 
ens are not brass. The throne of the universe is 
not void. God is, and He can help us, and that 
right early. 

There is one God and no more. More than one 
God, more than one supreme Ruler, would involve 
contradiction. With ten equal sovereigns, or five, 
how could any one of them be supreme? In every 
Jewish household of the olden time one of the first 
things to be taught the children, and the very first 
thing that the father uttered as he rose to greet 
the new day, was the word, ''Hear Israel, the 
Lord our God is One Lord;'' and in this expression 
Judaism was right against an idolatrous world. 
For to admit of there being more than one God 
would be to suggest conflict of jurisdiction, a con- 
flict in administration as well as in the funda- 
mental law. Were there to be several Gods, who 
could be certain which of them was his own God. 
In such a condition the man would be in constant 
doubt as to which sovereignty he was bound to 
acknowledge. Then, too, a plurality of Gods would 



100 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

carry with it an unsettlement of the absolute 
righteousness. Already we have too many stand- 
ards of piety. This man and that sets up his own 
view of what is right. As old Cecil put the 
thought, "We erect the idol self; and not only 
wish others to worship, but worship it ourselves." 
It is a relief to be assured that back of all there 
is one unchangeable standard; that One God 
sways the universal sceptre. Here all Christian- 
ity is agreed. Christians may debate the mode of 
the Divine existence, but they concur in teaching 
that there is just One God and one righteousness. 
But the doctrine of the Unity of God is at the 
foundation of religion; it is not the temple of 
religion itself. The Christian revelation is on a 
higher plane than Judaism. The writer of the 
epistle to the Hebrews shov/s this incontestably 
in that glowing passage, in which he contrasts the 
Christian's privilege with the aloofness and som- 
breness of the Old Covenant. What a picture is 
that of the Mount which might not be touched 
and which burned with fire! How gloomy and 
forbidding all that darkness and blackness and 
tempest! As we peruse that old Law to-day as 
written in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, with all 
the centuries intervening, we still hear the awful 
thunderings of Sinai, and almost feel the quaking 
of the ground underfoot. God to the Israelites 
was afar off, and to be worshiped with fear and 
trembling, since He was 

"Armed with omnipotence to save, 
Or crush man in the dust.'* 

It is the Christian who has the more glorious 
prospect, for he comes to Mount Zion, to the City 



THE PEACEMAKER 101 

of the Living God, to the Heavenly Jerusalem, to 
an innumerable company of angels, and to the 
general assembly and church of the first-bom. 
And as the fitting climax of his message, at the 
summit of his ecstatic flight, where his thought 
seems to pierce the very heavens, he points out 
the crowning gift, the excelling blessing of the 
Christian's hope, in the approach to Jesus, the 
Mediator of the New Covenent. This is the thought 
which renders our Christian worship such a de- 
light, that Christ walks with men, that Christ 
sweeps away the clouds and fears and misconcep- 
tions which have intervened between the True 
God and His children, and that He has taught the 
heart of trustful infancy and of trembling age 
alike to say, "Our Father,'' with the certainty that 
the great God loves us all more tenderly than 
can be experienced in intercourse with earthly 
fatherhood. 

Christianity teaches of God and of the Mediator 
between God and man : or as Paul states it in the 
Corinthian epistle, ''To us there is hut one God, 
the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him, 
and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, 
and we by him," (1 Cor. 8:6). To this he adds, 
perchance with a touch of unconscious humor, 
''Howbeit there is not in every man that knowl- 
edge.'' This is the light and the truth, Christ 
coming to the earth from heaven; Christ lifting 
the burdens from the weak, comforting the bosom 
of despair and extending the royal hope of salva- 
tion. 

Christ's mission to the earth includes the service 
of mediation. Six several times the word "Medi- 



102 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

ator'' is employed in the New Testament, and 
always in association with the life and work of 
Jesus. The word implies the idea of negotiation, 
of standing between, the settlement of differences, 
the making of peace. The United States ambassa- 
dor at a foreign court, who is empowered to repre- 
sent his government in treating affairs of state 
and in keeping both nations in peace and amity 
with each other, is a mediator, a peacemaker. 

Joseph's brethren in Egypt fell into difficulty 
because of the money which was found in their 
sacks, and especially because of the Governor's 
silver cup which was in Benjamin's sack. 
Although they were well on their journey home- 
ward they returned in haste. When they arrived 
they appealed to Joseph's steward to intercede 
with the Governor in their behalf. In the act they 
were making the steward a mediator, a peace- 
maker, between themselves and the man, who 
next under Pharaoh, was lord of all Egypt. 

In like maner also, when Saul the king was so 
enraged with David that he was trying to kill him, 
David engaged Jonathan to advise him how mat- 
ters were coming on in the court, and to help him 
if possible in securing a composition with the 
king. 

Connected with the idea of mediation, of peace- 
making, there are several necessary conditions : 

1. Mediation suggests separation, a division 
between two parties, who for the time being are in 
disagreement. We have a familiar adage to the 
effect that "It takes two to make a quarrel." By 
the same token it takes two to mend the quarrel. 

2. Mediation suggests that between the two 



THE PEACEMAKER 108 

principal parties there must be a measure of inde- 
pendence. When our national government sends 
its commissioners to treat with an Indian tribe, 
which still maintains its tribal organization, it 
recognizes that tribe's virtual sovereignty. These 
Indians are weak. If it seemed necessary our 
army could force them to any course that the gov- 
ernment desired. But in fact the government 
makes engagements with their chiefs, and solemn- 
izes treaties with them, under all the formalities 
that are employed in intercourse with a sovereign 
state. 

In like manner Jesus, who comes to negotiate 
with man, recognizes the dignity of humanity. He 
acknowledges man's freedom of choice and action. 
It is within man's power to obey God or to diso- 
bey, to accept or to reject the tender of Divine 
mercy. If he wills so to do he may serve God with 
all the faithfulness of faithful Abraham, or he 
may flout the Divine purpose with all the audacity 
of an Absalom or a Herod. In either instance 
heaven will not lift the sceptre of coercion. Man 
is to be urged and entreated. The minister of 
religion is to employ the accents of invitation. So 
Paul explained to the Corinthians, ''Now then me 
are ambassadors for Christy as though God did 
beseech you by us; we pray you in Christ's stead, 
be ye reconciled to God." (2 Cor. 5: 20). 

3. Mediation implies further an estrangement. 
There was no need for peacemaking with Enoch, 
who walked with God; nor with Elijah, who at 
Horeb hearkened to the still, small voice. There 
is no need of intercession for the child that leans 
upon its father's bosom, and who responds to his 



104 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

lightest word. It is only when the wire of sym- 
pathy has been broken that some one must be 
despatched to renew the connection, so that the 
messages of love may flow unrestricted from heart 
to heart. When the prodigal has deserted the 
home to wander in the far country of folly and sin 
it is time to send the messenger, bearing the ear- 
nest plea for him to put away his riotings and 
return to the father's house. 

4. Then also mediation presupposes the won- 
derful love of God. For the movement toward 
reconciliation begins with God. So the apostle 
John declared when he pointed out that ''Herein 
is love, not that we loved God, hut that he loved 
us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our 
sins." (1 John 4: 10). In this respect the Divine 
government is unique. Our human administra- 
tions bolster themselves up by the weakness of 
dignity. Their pride is easily wounded, and the 
hurt is slow of healing. In court the judge on the 
bench resents so much as a gesture of disrespect, 
and contempt of court renders the offender liable 
to a jail sentence. And we are prone to nurse 
grudges and resentments. A friend hurts our 
feelings by some hasty word or act and we cross 
his name from our books. We have the Indian's 
memory for slights, and his passion for revenge. 
Social usage as well as the law forbids resort to 
the tomahawk in return for an injury, whether 
real or imagined, but there is no penalty for the 
subtle sense of satisfaction at hearing that the 
man with whom we are at variance in not getting 
on well in the world. How miserable, how wicked 
such encouragement of animosity! There is no 



THE PEACEMAKER 105 

room for that in connection with the Gospel. ''How 
oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive 
him? till seven times?" asks Peter of the Lord, 
and Christ replies, '7 say not unto thee, Until sev- 
en times: but until seventy times seven.'' (Matt. 
18: 21, 22). And God's standard for the Divine 
forgiveness is still higher than that. For God 
harbors no revenges, but is full of long suffering 
and tender mercy. No loves that we know are 
comparable to His. God's love welcomes back to 
the fold the Peter who has denied the Master with 
curses and oaths ; it has place for a Saul who has 
been a grievous persecutor of the church, and it 
reaches out to every lost sinner the hope of repent- 
ance and renewal of favor with God. No such for- 
bearance is to be had elsewhere. As Lowell so 
truly sings, 

" Tis heaven alone that is given away: 

'Tis only God may be had for the asking.*' 

The Mediator, the Peacemaker, who descends 
bringing God's message of reconciliation is quali- 
fied at all points for his duty. 

He is robed with absolute power. His creden- 
tials supersede every envoy who came before Him, 
and He stands before us as the sole, the only nego- 
ciator through whom the Divine favor may come. 
This was what Peter declared to the High Priest 
and the assembled elders in their high court in 
Jerusalem, when speaking of Jesus, he said, 
''Neither is there salvation in any other: for there 
is none other name under heaven given among 
men whereby we must be saved/' (Acts 4: 12). 
This consideration of Christ's absolute authority 
in the work of salvation is of prime importance. 



106 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

In all transactions of moment we prefer to deal 
with principals rather than with subordinates. 
The soul is eager to know the terms which are 
ultimate and reliable. In the* matter of the soul's 
destiny no man can afford the possibility of mis- 
take or misapprehension. As to this there is a 
general conviction that if any fail of the Kingdom, 
none can fail who follow Jesus. Praise if you will 
a Socrates, the searcher for truth; honor if you 
will a Mohammed, whom you may name the sun- 
light for a darkened day; applaud if you will a 
Swedenborg, that man of keen vision and massive 
brain, but however you may rank them, and all 
the other leaders of religious thought, still it is 
Jesus who surpasses them all. Where they agree 
with Jesus we commend them. But the standard 
of truth unalloyed is in His hands. 

Christ in His office as Mediator and Peacemaker 
enjoys the special qualification of His exalted 
humanity. When two are separated by their igno- 
rance each of the other's language they must seek 
an interpreter who is master of the speech of 
both. The bridge which is built for crossing a 
stream must be long enough to reach the bank on 
either side. Even if it be built three-quarters of 
the way, unless it is completed for the rest of the 
distance it is as useless as no bridge at all. So 
our Mediator, our Peacemaker, who on the Divine 
side is in full touch with God, must also on the 
human side hold the full confidence and sympathy 
of man. Consequently Christ took upon Him our 
nature. He represents to us the universal man, 
the surpassing man, the perfect type, of which 
we are such imperfect variations. In His magnifi- 



THE PEACEMAKER 107 

cent discourse on the resurrection Paul alludes to 
this higher humanity of Jesus, naming Him as The 
Second Adam, and defining his position in the 
pertinent passage, ''The first man is of the earth 
earthy: the second man is the Lord from Heaven." 
(1 Cor. 15 : 47) . As the supreme man Christ wins 
our hearts. He is one with us: He is one of us. 
His earthly life was no pretence, as was taught 
in the Gnostic heresy. His tears were real. When 
we suffer hunger we remember that Christ hun- 
gered. If we are troubled, deep darkness fell upon 
His spirit in the Garden. As we behold Him bear- 
ing our sorrows and bending under the weight of 
the cross, our spirit reaches up toward His. 

"The Son of Man in tears, 
The wondering angels see. 
Be thou astonished, O my soul, 
He shed those tears for thee." 

There is power in the gospel of suffering. Those 
who have understood it best, the Pauls, the Peters, 
the Luthers, the Wesleys, the Moodys, have thrust 
all lesser things behind them and have gone forth 
to teach and preach of Jesus. 

Christ as Mediator, as Peacemaker, came to 
compose the estrangement between man and his 
Maker. Care should be exercised here to avoid a 
serious misapprehension. If trouble arises be- 
tween two who have been friends on the earth, 
the peacemaker who interposes will seek to bring 
both to a change of spirit. He will assume that 
in all probability both of them have been more or 
less at fault. So he seeks to make compromises, 
and begs that each shall yield somewhat of his 
rights, and forget some of his grievances. How 



108 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

far niay such an analogy apply in the mediatorial 
work of Christ? Can it be assumed that the 
Savior's mission was to reconcile man to God and 
God to man? The first half of the postulate may 
be admitted : the second half must be denied. We 
consent to the proposition that Christ came to 
reconcile man to God. To succeed in the task 
required that man should be changed, changed in 
his pursuits, changed in his associations, changed 
in his affections. Reconciling man to God involved 
a new creation, the making a new man, created 
after God in righteousness and true holiness. 
(Eph. 4:24). 

But reconciling God to man would require a 
change in the Infinite Being. And if God were to 
be changed, in what respect could He be changed ? 
Could He be changed in His affections? But God 
had been loving the sinner before. The reconcil- 
ing work began with God, who sent His Son into 
the world to save sinners because He loved them. 
For God to change in His affections would be to 
turn His love for sinners into hatred, and not 
even the worst among sinners could desire such a 
change in God as that. Could God change in His 
infinite righteousness? Surely not. Change in 
God's righteousness would be to transform virtue 
to vice, and that would be absurdly impossible. 
Where then could there be any change in God? 
Could it be in His attitude toward sin? But that 
attitude of God in abominating sin is altogether 
right and just. God must continue to hate sin, and 
we could not conceive of Him as God and as not 
hating sin. So it would seem that God was not to 
change at all. Nothing in the mediatorial work of 



THE PEACEMAKER 109 

Christ is to be construed as attempting to alter 
the divine law, the divine purpose, or the divine 
affections. The gospel cannot make compromise, 
and it yields nothing on the part of God, nothing 
that is essential to the strength or the glory of the 
divine government. The work of reconciliation is 
to be confined to making alterations in man, in 
changing him and his whole course of living. And 
this work is accomplished when the wanderer 
seeks after God and has become reconciled to God. 
Christ's work as Mediator, as the Divine Peace- 
maker, began with His proclamation of the truth. 
Much of human errancy has its source in misbe- 
liefs and misconception of values. When men 
think of God as harsh and wrathful and tyran- 
nical, as dealing out pain and destruction by 
wholesale, the tendency is not to draw them to 
God, but rather the reverse, to drive them farther 
away. When they set an exaggerated estimate on 
pleasure or wealth, so that these seem to them to 
be the supreme good, they will have little room left 
for a wholesome idea of their duty to God. So 
long as they regard the incidentals of religion, 
such as fastings, and the fringes on the garments, 
and the phylacteries of the Pharisees as the main 
thing, they will keep right on in their old way 
and neglect the weightier matters of the law. But 
Jesus in His intimate speech with the people and 
His disciples cleared the air of all these miasms, 
both mental and moral. He showed them that the 
God of all grace was infinite in love and compas- 
sion, and was planning good, and nothing but 
good, for all His earthly children. He taught them 
how empty and vain were all their pleasures, and 



110 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

all their trust in riches, which the moth could cor- 
rupt, or the thief could steal. And then as to wor- 
ship, He showed them how the simple faith of the 
child, and the penitent prayer of the publican, and 
the worship of the humblest disciple, who turned 
his face up to God in spirit and in truth, were 
acceptable always to the Father. 

Christ's work as Mediator and Peacemaker con- 
tinues in the power of His matchless example. As 
He walked with men, He was the incarnation of 
goodness, purity, kindness, and helpfulness. To 
sit at His feet was to drink in inspiration to nobler 
thought and more loyal conduct. To be in His 
company was to share His love for the right and 
his instinctive shrinking from even the suggestion 
of wrong. And this bad, mad world was in need 
of such an inspiring pattern of holiness. The 
good example is a teacher in a double way. It sets 
the copy for imitation. It brings the desirable 
standard directly before the eye. "Out of sight, 
out of mind," is an adage which would counsel 
keeping the best, the noblest, the truest in the 
range of constant vision. Then for the next influ- 
ence there is emulation, the desire to possess in 
one's self what is so eminently desirable. We have 
seen children at their play, and how in their play 
the younger ones are learning of the elder chil- 
dren. The process is not in much telling, but in 
the unstudied attempts of the smaller person to 
speak and act like the others. In this manner they 
acquire the better speech, the freer movement of 
the limbs, and the clearer notion of things about 
them, and their several relations. A holy man 
once wrote a valuable book which he called "The 



THE PEACEMAKER 111 

Imitation of Christ/' It is a book of meditations 
on Jesus and exhortations to follow Him. Of a 
truth such imitation of Christ is a wonderful fac- 
tor in lifting man upward and bringing him back 
to God. 

Christ as Mediator and Peacemaker helps to 
make peace through His all-conquering love. Of 
this it may be said that no such love was ever seen 
in this world before. We have been told of beau- 
tiful instances of parental and filial love; of 
fathers and mothers giving their all for their chil- 
dren, and children doing the like for their parents. 
And there have been most admirable expressions 
of loyalty and faithfulness of men to other men 
and to their country. But in all of these, even in 
those which were most memorable, there has been 
an element of narrowness. But with the Christ 
love there is no narrowness. It has been all-em- 
bracing, including the lovely and the unlovely, 
the good and the bad, the friend and the enemy; 
in short, it loves all, and everybody of every rank, 
and tribe, and nation, so that there is not a soul 
anywhere but that the love of Christ flows toward 
it in sustaining power and blessing. And such 
love, so pure and holy, rouses the return spirit of 
love in man. And as men began to love the lovely 
in Christ they saw more to love in each other. They 
began to experience a love for God's gracious pur- 
poses, and so their hearts were transformed, and 
they came into closer sympathy with all things 
divine. 

But the crowning work of Christ as Mediator 
and Peacemaker was in the glory of His sacrifice. 
When at night we observe the blazing orbs which 



112 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

overspread the sky like precious jewels broidered 
on the mantle of omnipotence, we note that they 
seem fixed and motionless, and yet the astronomer 
will say that all our solar system— the sun, the 
planets and their attendant satellites — are rushing 
with inconceivable velocity toward a greater cen- 
tral sun. And so we follow Jesus as He went about 
in Palestine, with all His wanderings, with all His 
pauses here and there, and with His journeys as 
they were again resumed, we may see that He had 
one fixed and predetermined direction of motion, 
that which points toward Calvary and its atoning 
sacrifice. All through His addresses to the people 
and to the disciples we trace intimations of His 
approaching suffering, and of the death by which 
He should glorify God. Hear Him in that last 
week of His ministry say, ''And /, if I be lifted up 
from the earth, will draw all men unto meJ' 
(John 12: 32), Lifted up! Yes, crucified! And 
yet that cross from that passover day has been 
drawing men out of their selfishness, out of their 
morbidness, out of their sins, to Jesus. Beholding 
His supreme sacrifice, they have crucified their 
raging passions and evil desires and designs. They 
have laid their all on the altar of consecration. 
They have consented to be poor, to be persecuted, 
to be martyred for Christ's sake. It has been the 
partnership of the cross which has drawn sinners 
to put away their sins and confess their Savior; 
which has induced faithful missionaries to travel 
to the ends of the earth to proclaim the Gos^'el to 
the heathen, and which has erected all these Chris- 
tian churches and institutions, to which the pres- 
ent progress and civilization of the world is due. 



THE PEACEMAKER 113 

And the Christ who has wrought all these amazing 
transformations in individuals and in world cus- 
toms and institutions, has in countless ways been 
bringing peace to the nations and to the individual 
soul. 

Blessed are they who have heard His voice, and 
who in consequence are able to say with the apos- 
tle, ''Therefore being justified by faith, we have 
peace imth God through our Lord Jesus Christ/' 
(Rom. 5:1), 



THE UPLIFTED VEIL 



VII. 
THE UPLIFTED VEIL 

THREE of the Evangelists, Matthew in his 
sixteenth chapter, Mark in his eighth, and 
Luke in his ninth, concur in presenting 
Jesus' discourse to the disciples on the value of the 
soul life, in which He declared the soul life to be 
all, while that of the body compared with it was 
as nothing. ''For what," so said He in conclusion, 
''is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world 
and lose his own soul V The soul of man, unseen, 
untangible, immaterial, which cannot be weighed 
in your balances, which none of your scientific 
contrivances can uncover, nevertheless out-weighs 
the universe. Because of this immeasurable valu- 
ation of the soul, the life of the body is to be 
restrained, the cross is to be lifted, and Christ is 
to be followed in His great work of saving mercy. 
It may well be suspected that this speech of 
cross-bearing fell upon heavy ears. Those dis- 
ciples were more of the pattern of ourselves than 
we commonly imagine. We are to understand at 
the time of our Lord's address that they were no 
more ready to take up the cross to live or die for 
the Master than any dozen of our average church 
members, who are moderately religious and who 
take such precious good care not to become too 
religious. It is much the part of human nature to 
applaud the heroism of the martyrs and to hang 



118 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

floral wreaths upon the shrines of their pious 
sacrifice, and at the same time to scurry to a safe 
distance from the chance of wearing the martyr 
crown for one's self. Those half tutored disciples, 
who had not yet experienced the baptism of a per- 
fect love strengthened by trial, shrunk and fal- 
tered at that word of Jesus, ''Let him deny him- 
self J' In their deepest souls they questioned the 
meaning of His words, and when they met together 
by twos or threes, in .moments when they thought 
themselves unobserved, they were apt to exchange 
their misgivings and their doubts as to their abil- 
ity to meet the Master's will. And even when they 
were all assembled and sitting at the Master's 
feet, in all likelihood they were troubled and 
heavy-hearted. That was a hard saying, indubit- 
ably hard, and who was able to bear it? that word, 
''Let him deny himself.'' 

All this shrinking and self -questioning the Mas- 
ter saw. As for that, what is there that He does 
not see? If some poor woman in the thick of the 
crowd touched but the hem of His garment. He 
knew it without anybody telling. If some envious 
Pharisee caviled at his discourse, though not so 
much as a syllable of it was breathed aloud, 
though the beating of the man's heart was more 
audible than that silent murmur, yet the Savior 
heard and answered the unspoken challenge. And 
to-day there is not a heart-throb of anguish under 
the spreading sky, not a moan of grief over the 
grave of a buried love, not a sigh of distress for 
a misguided step or a purpose unattained, but 
our Lord sees it and knows it altogether. With 
the same Christ love that impelled Him to replen- 



THE UPLIFTED VEIL 119 

ish the wine at the marriage feast in Cana, or to 
siunmon Lazarus from the tomb in Bethany, He 
observed His disciples' discontent and made ready- 
to extend them consolation. 

But it is to be noticed, as the evangelists report 
these affairs, that the Lord did not comfort them 
immediately, nor possibly in the manner that they^ 
would have chosen, had the opportunity of choice 
been given them. Heaven has a way of governing 
its concerns according to its own plans, some of 
which, to our impatient sense, are over long in 
fulfilment. We seldom make due allowance for 
the formative effects of time. If we discover some 
blatant offender engaged in sowing the seeds of 
error, as was the case with James and John while 
they were students in theology, we take up the 
cry with them, ''O Lord, call down the fire from 
heaven/' But the Lord does not call down the fire, 
and the tares keep growing up so that we see them 
every day. But the good wheat grows up also, and 
by and by we realize that the Kingdom has no 
need to consume what must soon be dying out of 
itself. Some great sorrow befalls. It is crushing, 
over-powering. We feel that our grief is greater 
than we can bear. We cry, ''0 Lord, how long?'' 
But we hear no response, and it seems as if the 
sun had perished from our sky, and that we could 
never be able to smile again. But afterward we 
found that the sorrow did not so much crush as 
refine us. It strengthened our moral fiber. It 
quickened our powers of sympathy. It made us 
better and more useful to those about us. 

Possibly we are too much inclined to impatience. 
There was once a young man in school, who was 



120 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

fitting himself to engage in the foreign field as a 
missionary. He was planning to go out to Africa 
or to India. And he wrote me a letter in which he 
betrayed great anxiety of spirit. He felt if he 
remained in school to complete the full course it 
would be a long time to wait, and so he wrote me 
with the evident hope that I would counsel him to 
drop his books and at once take up the task of 
saving souls. But for the life of me I could not 
reply according to his wish. Doubtless God had 
a work for that ardent young man, but the 
Almighty would hardly welcome his coming before 
he was fully prepared for the arduous service. Can 
we not remember how Paul with all his riches of 
rabbinical learning had to spend three good years 
after he was converted outside of Damascus in 
making himself ready to preach the gospel ? The 
young ministers will do well to secure all the 
information possible before entering upon the task 
of dealing with the heathen, since the man who 
knows will always have the advantage of the other 
whose zeal outruns his discretion. 

It would be an advantage if there were a more 
general perception, I will not say of the Divine 
procrastination, but of the Divine deliberation. 
God moves, but it is at the time of His own 
appointment. If His movements seem unduly 
tedious to our restless spirits, we may be sure that 
the hour which He sets will be the best in every 
way. Israel was in bondage for years and years 
while God was raising up Moses for their deliv- 
erance. Had Moses launched the exodus of his 
nation the year that he smote the Egyptian, the 



THE UPLIFTED VEIL 121 

whole movement would have been a dismal and an 
untimely catastrophe. 

We may well reflect on the lost world that was 
waiting for the advent of the Messiah. What long 
centuries unrolled while the world far and wide 
was sitting in gross darkness. And yet only when 
the fulness of times was come was he born in 
Bethlehem. And even then what long years of 
waiting there were, the years of infancy, the years 
of adolescence, the years of manhood, until he was 
the full thirty years of age. And so it need never 
astonish us when we meet with delay in our 
appeals for Divine assistance. It is not for man's 
best good that his prayers should be sight-drafts 
on the bank of eternal mercy, the creature order- 
ing up the Creator. Heaven reserves some of its 
rights and prerogatives. Man is to pray, but he 
is to tarry for God's answer till it shall please God 
to send the answer. Restlessness on the part of 
the suppliant cannot hasten the orderly procedures 
of Divine providence, nor can any opposition of 
the human arm avail to withstand its progress. 

Now, in the Lord's own time, while His disci- 
ples were brooding over the question of self-de- 
nials and cross-bearing, was the seven days which 
we term a week. All that time he allowed them 
to ponder and murmur and to grow anxious over 
the prospect of the trials and privations which 
they might have to face, and for the whole week 
He did not stir to ease their uncertainty. They 
were to wait and endure till they had learned to 
some extent the significance of sacrifice, and of the 
relief that comes when care is lifted from the 
aching heart. 



122 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

Finally, when the Lord was ready to give them 
relief, it was not as one might suppose, by toning 
down or explaining away his former instruction, 
or even by telling them that they had been borrow- 
ing troubles which they might never be called on 
to experience. Far from that. He fortifies them 
for more strenuous service by giving them a mani- 
festation of His glory, which hitherto had been 
held latent. With this intent He selects three of 
the disciples, those of the most prominence in the 
company, the men whose fears if continued would 
be the most mischievous, and whose cheerful con- 
fidence would lend buoyancy of spirit to the others, 
and led them apart into a mountain to pray. What 
mountain this was is not determined with certain- 
ty. Some writers have concluded that it was Mt. 
Tabor, and for this reason they have called that 
eminence ''The Holy^ Mount," but the objection t© 
this view is no less than the fact that at this period 
Tabor was fortified with bastions and a redout, 
and was garrisoned with a band of Roman 
soldiers. We can hardly suppose that our Lord 
would seek a praying place close beside a camp of 
roystering legionaries. A more probable sugges- 
tion would be some site to the north of Caesarea 
Philippi, in the hill district of Mt. Hermon. As to 
the positive location, like the grave of Moses, no 
man knoweth it to this day. 

But it is the main facts that we; desire and the 
evangelists place them before us in detail. Jesus, 
with Peter, James and John, proceeded to the hill 
region, and there in the silence of nature the Sav- 
ior bowed with His companions in prayer. There 
He lifted His voice in intimate converse with the 



THE UPLIFTED VEIL 123 

Father, with your Father, with our Father. It 
delights us to reflect upon Jesus as engaging in 
prayer. Prayer, it is the sublimest uplifting of 
the soul in fervent devotion. It is the link that 
binds our helpless sinful earth to the skies. It is 
the very speech of the angels who kneel about the 
throne. It is the voice that enlists omnipotence 
for the rescue of human weakness. It is the key 
that throws back the bolts of paradise. 

Prayer is the simplest form of speech 

That infant lips can try; 
Prayer, the sublimest strains that reach 

The Majesty on high. 

It would be well for men to remember the lesson 
they learned at their mother's knee, when she 
taught them never to retire to repose till they had 
breathed out the evening petition to the All- 
Father. Only when the soul has reached the satis- 
faction of its every desire can it discard the atti- 
tude and the voice of prayer. Only when it has 
no inclination for betterment in life and purpose, 
only when it cares nothing for communion with 
God, only when it chooses to live like the beast and 
die the death of the beast, can it afford to cease to 
pray. But the pure and the holy pray. Living- 
stone in the heart of Darkest Africa made suppli- 
cation to God. Stanley when he was searching to 
find Livingstone found that he must pray. Marshal 
Foch in command of the allied armies that were 
facing toward Berlin spent half an hour daily in 
prayer. Washington, when his soldiers at Valley 
J'orge streaked the snows with bleeding feet, and 
often clustered in their winter quarters suffering 
from shortage of food, retired into the thicket to 



124 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

pray. Abraham Lincoln, when the strife was hot, 
and the tidings from the front were disheartening, 
went into his closet to pray. And Jesus prayed. 
When we behold Him praying in the wilderness, 
or talking with God on the mountain side, we may 
realize that no man, however exalted his station, 
or however distinguished he may be for wisdom 
or goodness, can rise above the need and comfort 
of prayer. 

But as Jesus prayed in the seclusion of the 
mountain He became Himself. Hitherto He had 
yeen veiling His divinity in the body of humanity. 
He had taken upon Himself the form of a servant, 
while in fact He was King of kings. He had been 
the babe on the bosom of Mary, the child with the 
children in Egypt, the young carpenter plying 
Joseph's trade in Nazareth, and the teacher in- 
structing His disciples and called Rabbi by the 
people. All this time the human nature had been 
concealing the "divine nature from over-curious 
eyes. But now, while in the spirit and the atti- 
tude of prayer, the Divine nature shone out 
through the human nature, as the flame of the 
lighted lamp shines out through the translucent 
globe. For the moment the spirit is dominant 
over the flesh, spirit is radiant through the flesh. 
His very form and countenance are altered, are 
transfigured, and His raiment glows white and 
glistening with the illumination of Heaven, and 
became as it might look to angelic eyes. 

But this was not all. For two effulgent ones 
stood with Him, two heroes and representatives 
of the ancient time — Moses and Elias — Elias who 
had mounted to glory in a chariot of flame ; and 



THE UPLIFTED VEIL 125 

Moses, who at the building of the tabernacle, and 
the giving forth of the law, had talked with God 
face to face. What an awe must have affected 
Peter and James and John at such a sight, and at 
hearing Moses and Elias consulting with Jesus 
about the death which He must presently accom- 
plish at Jerusalem. All this was profitable for 
faith, and yet it was not enough. The Lord would 
not permit the three to hold in their hearts the 
shadow of a doubt concerning His origin and 
essential nature, and so the heavens were made to 
speak. A cloud descended as at Mount Sinai of 
old. From the depths of the cloud the disciples 
heard the voice that talked with Adam in Eden. 
It spoke in the plainest of tones, saying, ''This is 
wy beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; hear 
yc him.'' Hearing that voice, the disciples were 
overcome and fell prostrate with faces toward the 
ground. And they did not stir again till the Mas- 
ter roused them with a touch. As they went down 
the mountain the Lord sealed their lips with the 
direction that they should tell no man till the Son 
of Man was risen from the dead. 

We may well believe that those disciples came 
from the mountain with all their fears scattered to 
the winds. Other fears might beset them in the 
future, but for the present all were dispelled ; and 
when at some later moment others might rise, the 
memory of this experience would suffice to allay 
them. If the Lord had not withdrawn His speech 
about bearing the cross. He had supplied an incen- 
tive for cross-bearing that was to make every 
affliction light and every trial a joy. 



126 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

This Mount of Transfiguration affords us a 
graphic object lesson respecting the Divine meth- 
od. We might be led to think that whatever the 
Lord bade His disciples they should have trusted 
Him; that if their faith were worthy it should 
have conquered every doubt, and that the kind of 
loyalty that demanded a miracle to support it was 
not worth supporting. But we can be thankful 
that God does not so view the matter. The faith 
that God requires is to rest upon good judgment 
and always shows that it rests upon a substantial 
basis. We are to hold the truths of the Gospel 
and to follow the Christian life because of sound 
proofs and logical reasons. 

All this life of faith proceeds upon accepted 
business principles, the principles which we are 
practicing every day. You may wish fifty dollars 
from the bank and you go there and offer a check 
for that amount. The teller or the cashier scrut- 
inizes the check, which is a neat piece of paper, 
ornamented with printing and sundry pen 
scratches. When the bank official has satisfied 
himself that it is all right he counts you out the 
fifty dollars that you called for. On what grounds 
does he cash you the check? Is it because the 
check is standard money? Not so, for it is not 
money. Is it because you have asked him for the 
money? No indeed, for he is not paying out money 
on polite invitations. Why he cashes the check is 
because he accepts the signature as genuine, and 
because he believes that the man who wrote the 
signature is good for the amount, and that you 
who have endorsed it are good for the amount 
also. In that business transaction there was large 



THE UPLIFTED VEIL 127 

room for the exercise of faith, but the faith had 
good grounds for its trust. 

In similar manner a father is to have faith in 
his son, not because he happens to be his son, but 
because he has shown himself a true son by heed- 
ing the parental counsel and by conducting him- 
self generally as a true son should. 

And so a wife is to have faith in her husband, 
not because she has given her hand in lawful mar- 
riage, but because he has proven himself faithful 
and devoted and in every way worthy of her con- 
fidence. 

And such is the divine method, to win the confi- 
dence of men by presentation of evidence. The 
Lord did not ask men to believe in Him because 
He said that He had come down from Heaven. On 
the contrary He said on one occasion, '7/ / bear 
witness of myself, my witness is not true.'' (1 
John 5 : 31) . His complaint against the Pharisees 
did not lie in their disregard for His statements 
concerning Himself, but because after He had 
done before them the works that no one ever, 
they still remained captious and unbelieving. He 
had taught them truths so precious that they 
stood forth as the veritable truths of heaven. He 
had wrought the most convincing miracles. For 
such reasons it was their duty to accept and 
believe Him. Now when His disciples were dis- 
heartened He had cheered them by unveiling His 
glory on the mount. 

Here we have instruction that may not be 
slighted or ignored. Whoever desires the confi- 
dence of his fellows should furnish good grounds 
for confidence. A good character well maintained 



128 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

secures approbation. As one is kind to others, 
as he is true in every relation, as his word is better 
than many another's bond, he will have no trouble 
in winning trust and good-will. Somehow as the 
world goes men reach the level of their deserving. 
Even those who have been unfortunate enough to 
slip into some error or mistake can live down the 
mishap and establish a fresh reputation. 

The Mount of Transfiguration carries a lesson 
respecting the after-life of the soul. Here we face 
a great mystery. When our friends leave us at 
death and pass on into the other world we wonder 
as to their direction and their destiny. Some who 
pause on the brink of the unknown are hopeless. 
They know the earth and its works, but they are 
not so sure about Heaven. And they are so accus- 
tomed to this mortal body, to these hands and feet 
of flesh, and to all that goes to the make-up of the 
mortal body, that they find it impossible to con- 
ceive of any existence without these accessories, 
or without the actual substance of the material 
body. Some journey on this track to such degree 
that they regard flesh and blood a necessity of the 
life of the hereafter, just as they are a necessity in 
the present life ; and so they settle it that when the 
body dies all that there is of the man dies with it, 
and all that there is of him goes into the tomb, and 
with that they declare that there can never be any 
life for him, not any existence for him, till some 
far-off future, when the soul and the body together 
will be rescued from the embrace of the grave and 
resuscitated for the life of glory. This scene of 
Christ's transfiguration helps us to reach the 
truth respecting such a philosophy of materialism. 



THE UPLIFTED VEIL 129 

Here in the Mount we have seen Moses and Elias 
conversing with Jesus. But Elias had left the 
world nine centuries before this occurrence, and 
Moses had bidden farewell to the Israelitish host 
in the land of Moab fourteen centuries before. 
Yet here Moses and Elias live and speak with 
Jesus. Does that support the view that soul and 
body go into the grave together? Does that seem 
as if the soul of Moses was reposing with his body 
in that Moabitish grave, there to await the trump 
of the resurrection mom? We are informed that 
Solomon was wise, and he was wise enough to 
draw a firm distinction between the essential man 
and the body in which the essential man has his 
temporary dwelling while he is here on the earth. 
For speaking of death and its changes he declared, 
''Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: 
and, the spirit unto God who gave it/' (Eccl. 12: 
7). But if the spirit returns unto God, it can be 
only the living spirit. And in the presence of God 
all spirits are of this order, living and clothed 
with a spiritual body, without any taint of the 
earthly body, as they serve before God in the ex- 
cellent glory. 

And Jesus gives us the like testimony as to the 
condition of the soul which follows this change 
which we call death. It is a wonderful thing to 
have Jesus as the interpreter of Scripture, and 
whenever He opens the page of the law or the 
prophecy we men of the earth should be intent 
with open ear and the open mind. Now for gener- 
ations the Jews had been, quoting a passage from 
the Old Testament, which they imagined had for 
its chief content the assertion of God as the special 



130 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

protecter and guardian of their ancestors. But 
there was much more to the passage than that, and 
so one day our Lord called it up and gave it a 
fresh exposition. As might be expected His inter- 
pretation floods the passage with a gleam of heav- 
enly radiance. Hear Him say, ''But as touching 
the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that 
^vhich was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am 
the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and 
the God of Jacob?'' And from that He went on 
to give the illuminating comment, ''God is not the 
God of the dead, but of the living.'' That expres- 
sion, "God is not the God of the dead, but of the 
living," uttered in this conection can mean noth- 
ing less than at that moment Abraham, and Isaac, 
and Jacob were not lying asleep in the grave, but 
were living, sentient beings; existing somewhere 
in God's house for the faithful ; possibly not hav- 
ing reached as yet their highest possibilities of 
glory, but certainly participating in the joys of 
the celestial paradise. And if that can be said 
truly of Abraham and the patriarchs, it can also 
be said of all the faithful of God who have gone 
on before us, that they are living and awaiting 
our coming when the days are done which God 
gives us for our better preparation for the upper 
sanctuary. 

The Transfiguration speaks with eloquent voice 
of Christ's divinity and sovereignty. It is a 
rebuke to all the cavilers who so readily grant Him 
primacy as a teacher, but controvert His authority 
as Savior and Son of God. When we heed the 
testimony of Scripture, we are taught that Jesus 
is the Christ, the everlasting Son of the Father. 



THE UPLIFTED VEIL 131 

He is consubstantial with the Father, so much so 
that the one apostle who knew Him the most inti- 
mately declares, ''Whosoever denieth the Son, the 
same hath not the Father/' (1 John 2 : 23). How 
the human and the divine are associated in Jesus, 
and how the human nature could at one time con- 
ceal the divine nature, and how again the human 
nature could become translucent, so that the divine 
nature could shine through and glorify it, it is 
not necessary for us to comprehend. There is 
much that we do not profess to comprehend. We 
know that the blades of grass grow, but we do not 
know how it is that the vitality in the seed can 
overcome the deadness of the soil about it, and 
draw from that soil its life and substance; but 
we accept the facts of that marvel of nature. The 
sun shines. We know it very well, but we do not 
comprehend how it shines and gives life to all the 
earth, although we do have some very ingenious 
explanations of the possibilities in the case. But 
the sun will still shine on whether we compre- 
hend its mysterious workings, or neglect them 
altogether. 

As for the truth of the union of the human and 
the divine in Jesus, we may receive it on the 
authority of the Scripture, whether we compre- 
hend it or otherwise. When some one asked Daniel 
Webster if he understood it, he frankly admitted 
that he did not, and from that he went on to 
remark that he did not expect to comprehend a 
Savior who was worthy of human adoration. As 
for the testimony of the fact of such union of the 
human and the divine in Jesus, the New Testa- 
ment is full of it from beginning to end, both in 



132 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

the way of definite statements and in implied 
allusions. He declared for Himself that He came 
down from heaven. Angels proclaimed His heav- 
enly mission. Celestial voices at His baptism and 
in the Holy Mount confirm the assurance. Every 
miracle that He wrought attests the claim. But 
if all the other evidences were to be dismissed as 
inadequate, the transfiguration should be convinc- 
ing enough. After that experience He might 
descend from the Mount to resume His teaching 
and preaching, and even suffer Himself to be 
crucified without resistance; but the memory of 
that radiant presence on the mountain could not 
be forgotten. Long years after Peter employed 
this incident to confirm the faith of the church by 
his word, ''We were eyewitnesses of his majesty 
in the holy mount/' and ''This voice which came 
from heaven we heard/' (2 Pet. 1: 16, 18). 

But the transfiguration teaches us something of 
the beatification of the heavenly state. Moses and 
Elias appeared clad in beautiful garments, shining 
with celestial light. The like glory is to be the 
portion of all who come up in the first resurrec- 
tion. There is to be a time when all are to be 
changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. 
They are to be transfigured, transformed into the 
likeness of Christ. The resurrection body is to be 
a spiritual body, in which there shall be no room 
for the aches, and ailments, disfigurements, and 
limitations of the earthly body. This is the prom- 
ise of the apostle Paul, who declares, "For our 
conversation is in heaven, from whence also we 
look for the Savior, the Lord Jesu^ Christ: who 
shall change our vile body, that it may be fa^h- 



THE UPLIFTED VEIL 133 

toned like unto his glorious body, according to the 
working whereby he is able even to subdue all 
things unto himself." (Phil. 3 :20, 21) . And in this 
glorified spiritual body the redeemed shall have 
sweet counsel and fellowship together, and with 
the Savior, and then, as the apostle adds, ''So shall 
we be ever with the Lord." 



THE SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 



VIIL 

THE SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 

THE experience of the Christian convert in 
brief summation is simply this, an old, un- 
spiritual life; the death of it, and a new, 
transformed life in Christ as Savior and Redeem- 
er. We have an analogue to this in the awakening 
of Spring after the frigidity and barrenness of 
winter. The dull earth, lately hidden by ice and 
snow, sends up crocusses, daffodils, jonquils, and 
anemones. Wastes of meadow and lawn change 
color with the springing grass, and the trees, 
which have been unclad skeletons for weary 
months, are bursting forth with bud and blossom. 

So with the heart of man. The old life, relig- 
iously, was the chill of winter. However fervent 
it might have been in the direction of the world, 
toward God its faculties were in suspense. Pro- 
fession of the faith? None. Activity to secure 
the conversion of others? None. Hearty co-oper- 
ation in the work of the Master? Also none. 

But suddenly there comes a change. The former 
indifference vanishes, and the spiritual life blooms 
out in vernal luxuriance. Interests that once were 
hated, or at least ignored, are now eagerly sought. 
Associations that were despised are now rever- 
enced. The heart that once was clamoring for 
worldly pleasures now takes delight in public 
worship and in holy meditation. To friends who 



138 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

are still of the world all this transformation of 
character is a surprise. So little was such a 
change expected that the thoughtless attribute it 
to temporary excitement, or if it does not soon 
languish, then they ascribe it to rank fanaticism. 
We recall from the Book of Acts how the Jews and 
Gentiles, who were unsympathetic with Paul in 
his espousal of Jesus, set him down as a lunatic 
who had become crazed by overmuch learning. So 
the unsympathetic now, when they have their 
attention attracted to the joy of the convert, happy 
in his Savior's love, think him under the influence 
of a delusion, which they trust will soon subside. 
All remark the change, and the experienced among 
them realize that it closes the chapter of the past, 
when they can say of a friend who has been a 
leader in gaities, "Behold he prays." 

But in this remarkable change, this death, this 
crucifixion of the old life and the opening of the 
renewed life in Christ, however those who are out 
in the world may misconceive and misinterpret it, 
Christians themselves have but the one testimony. 
Like the blind man, whom the hateful Jews cast 
out of the synagogue, they refer it all to the Sav- 
ior. It is Jesus who has opened their eyes ; Jesus 
who has wrought the radical and joyful change, 
and in witness of what He has accomplished for 
them they confess, "Whereas I was blind, now I 
see." 

Mrs. Judson, wife of the famous missionary to 
Burmah, wrote one day in her diary, "It is a year 
this day since I entertained a hope in Christ. 
About this time in the morning, when reflecting on 
the words of the leper — If we enter into the city, 



THE SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 139 

then the famine is in the city and we shall die 
there: if we sit still here, we die also — and felt 
that if I returned to the world I should surely 
perish, and I could but perish if I threw myself 
on the mercy of Christ. Then came light and 
relief and comfort such as I never knew before/' 

When I read the life of that great man, Dr. Nor- 
man McLeod, the Queen's Chaplain, I fell upon 
this passage which he wrote on his forty-fourth 
birthday, ''Glory to God that I have been bom! 
I praise him and bless him for the gift of an exist- 
ence in a world in which his own son has been 
born a Savior, a brother, and in which he rules. 
I praise him, I bless him for such a gift, so worthy 
of himself. may I realize his purpose more and 
more by being more and more his own child in 
simplicity, humility, faith, love, and undivided 
obedience. Intense life in Christ is intense joy." 
That closing sentence of the eminent divine 
deserves to be inscribed on every true Christian 
heart, "Intense life in Christ is intense joy." 

Expressions such as these are general among 
devout Christians. It is Jesus who leads them 
into green pastures and beside the still waters. 
The living fountains of their new and happy 
experience are in the heart of Christ. 

This change of conversion, which buries the old 
life, and glories in living a new life in the Son 
of God, is both vital and complete. With the 
changes in the life it alters all the prospects of 
the life. Imagine a man hiring for a year a splen- 
did mansion, whose owner lets it for that time on 
account of taking a trip abroad. For the period of 
the lease, the year, the lessee has the benefit of all 



140 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

the luxurious apartments, the rich furniture, the 
soft carpets in which the foot sinks at every step, 
the priceless paintings, all these are in his posses- 
sion, but when the year terminates the owner 
comes back to enjoy his own and the tenant must 
depart. The arrangement after all was but a tem- 
porary makeshift. 

And just that is to be said of our fairest pros- 
pects of the earth. Be they what they may, un- 
limited fortune, high honors, and emoluments in 
the service of the city or state, they are to be had 
only for a limited term ; for when death knocks at 
the door, dispossess warrant in hand, the tempor- 
ary tenant, unless he has laid up treasure in heav- 
en, is poorest of the poor. Where now are all his 
houses and lands? Others possess them and col- 
lect their revenues. Where are the stocks and 
bonds and mortgages? No one deposits them in 
the tomb: other hands control them and enjoy 
their returns. A ring or a jewel may go into the 
casket along with the body, but even if the ring 
remain upon the finger, or the jewel upon the 
breast, they will stay there in the tomb, silent wit- 
nesses of decay and dissolution. The soul as it 
ascends to God takes along not a single penny of 
all its wealth. If it has no other credential, how 
lost and miserable its condition! Diogenes, 
stretching himself in the Athenian sunshine, had 
more, for he owned his earthen jar in which he 
could curl himself for repose at night. Lazarus 
begging at the rich man's gate had more, for he 
had a share of the crumbs that the cooks cast out 
to the dogs. But he who goes up to the judgment 
with nothing to commend him but his worldly 



THE SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 141 

possessions and honors stands there with empty 
hands. For he cannot show a thread from all his 
ample wardrobe, not a splinter from all his ships 
and warehouses, not a farthing from all his treas- 
ure boxes. 

How different the prospect for the Christian! 
The earth may wax old like a garment, and the 
elements melt with fervent heat, but his treasures 
which have been laid up in heaven are everlasting. 
No dread to him of judgment and fiery indigna- 
tion that shall devour the wicked ; nothing to him 
but a glad look forward to the welcome to the 
presence of the Lord. 

That new life of the soul confers all these de- 
lightful prospects because of the change in human 
relations on which all the future depends. A con- 
sideration of the moral and legal aspects of adop- 
tion may aid us to a clearer understanding. A 
family makes arrangement to bring to the home 
a child from outside and adopt it for their own. 
Poor child! It may have been subjected to hard 
usage. It may often have gone hungry; it may 
have suffered abuse and blows and in its misery 
have often wished itself dead. But this family 
comes and takes the child. Lawyers are consulted 
and papers of adoption are drawn and executed. 
The little one is bathed, ^ut into fresh clothing and 
introduced into its new habitation. To that little 
heart, after what it has undergone, the new place 
seems like paradise. There is always plenty on 
the table, so there are no more pangs of hunger. 
Besides that there is plenty of comfort and plenty 
of love. Does the little heart ever tremble lest all 
this happiness may vanish. No need of that ! For 



142 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

back of all is the changed relationship. This 
child does not belong to the street any more, it is 
a child of the home. The law settles that. There 
is no question of birthright about it. The seal of 
adoption binds the home to the child and the child 
to the home. 

Similarly whenever the Christian suffers from 
low spirits and begins to ask himself if it is pos- 
sible that he can be worthy of the abounding 
grace of God, he can fall back upon his adoption 
into the heavenly family, which fact binds him to 
God and God to him. 

But how has this been brought about? The case 
is simple enough. He has surrendered the world 
in his open profession of faith, and in the act he 
has struck a definite alliance with heaven. He 
ha^ put away all his former enmity to God whom 
he now loves. He has rejoiced in the grace of the 
gospel and accepted its terms of mercy through 
the gift of the Savior. He has come into the house 
of God, not as a stranger, not as a visitor, not as 
an alien, but as a fellov/ citizen with the saints, 
and as an heir of God and joint heir with Jesus 
Christ. Because of this new relation, Peter prom- 
ises him an ''inheritance incorruptible, and unde- 
filed, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heav- 
en for you.'' (1 Pet. 1:4). Paul explains it also 
when he wrote to the Romans, ''The spirit itself 
heareth witness with our spirit that we are the 
children of God.'' (Rom. 8: 16). There is great 
fulness of promise in that phrase of Paul's, "joint 
heirs with Christ." That means nothing short of 
this, if Christ has rights in the kingdom of glory 
because He is the Son of God, that the Christian 



THE SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 143 

by the same token shares in those same rights 
with Him. The relation of being a Christian gives 
the hope; first, in God's amazing grace; and sec- 
ond, in God's amazing promises; and third, in 
God's amazing obligation. The Christian is the 
child of God: wherefore God must sustain, and 
maintain, and save His child. 

But the change from the old life to the new life 
in Christ reaches beyond this field of prospects 
and relationships and takes up the question of 
character. What is character? The word itself 
signifies a mark, a stamp, a figure, a symbol, 
traced or cut or hewn; but always, be it what it 
may, something that is fixed and settled. So under 
Christ's instruction the soul acquires a stamp, a 
character. It is outlined by the influences it has 
experienced, hewn by its adversities, graven by 
its conscious acceptance of Christian responsibil- 
ities. There can be a worldly character. It has a 
fixedness in pursuits and pleasures that begin in 
the earth and that rise no higher. And there is 
Christian character; character stamped with the 
ineffaceable escutcheon of the cross. How is the 
worldly character changed into the other? It is 
by the grace of God. God's spirit melts the stony 
heart in the furnace of His redeeming love, and 
while it is still tender He stamps it with the seal 
of heaven. In this divine operation one may grant 
all that may be asked respecting the effective 
working of man in the effort to deepen the work 
of grace, to engrave the heavenly markings in 
deeper lines ; but conversion itself is the work of 
God; God drawing man to Himself, and God be- 
stowing the new heart and the new life. 



144 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

We meet this radical change of character in that 
dissolute and profane tinker of Bedford, John 
Bunyan. All his pursuits were low, his compan- 
ions vulgar and dissipated, and all his thought was 
on the worldly plane. He was alive with the joy 
of living, but religion with him was a thing to be 
hated and despised. But to this man of gross pur- 
suits and pleasures came a vital experience. While 
crossing the fields one day he seemed to hear a 
voice in his soul, saying, ''Wilt thou leave thy sins 
and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell V 
Right there came the decisive struggle, sin trying 
to hold its dominion over him, grace striving for 
his salvation. At length he cast himself upon the 
divine mercy and was at once a different man. 
Profanity was put out of his mouth and he was 
singing the songs of Jesus. His ribaldry was 
turned to praying, and his delight in the rude 
sports of the field of his day was transformed into 
the peace and comfort of Christian worship. His 
mind turned to heavenly themes. No man of that 
age was able to write so winsomely of the wicked 
gate, of the Interpreter's house, and of the Delect- 
able Mountains ; and this was possible because his 
whole heart was devoted to the concerns of his 
Savior. What a change from the ribald songs of 
the tavern to composing that noble book, "The 
Pilgrim's Progress.'' 

This God-given Christian character imposes 
responsibilities and obligations. The Christian 
along with his other desirable traits acquires a 
keen sense of honor. Duties which in the former 
time were calmly ignored now have become imper- 
ative. These include all religious duties; a holy 



THE SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 145 

conversation, and influence, faithful attendance 
upon divine worship, the moral and material sup- 
port of the Gospel, and the reading and study of 
Holy Scripture, so that he may continue in touch 
with the mind of God. But the awakened sense of 
Christian obligation goes further still. The Chris- 
tian feels that in every emergency he must act 
worthy of the Master. This will account for the 
surprising record of Christian beneficence. Full 
ninety per cent, of the vast sums contributed for 
benevolent purposes, for the founding of hospitals 
and colleges and other benevolent institutions has 
come from the hearts and purses of Christians. 
This is to be explained in two ways. It may be 
said that the most of the wealth of the world is in 
Christian hands. That is doubtless true, for God 
blesses righteousness. But the men who hold what 
wealth they possess with the tightest grip are the 
non-Christians. 

Christianity imposes obligation. An instance 
in point comes to us from the siege of Acre in 
1799, where the French were attacking the Turks 
by land, and the English were co-operating with 
their shipping from the sea. A storming party 
of the French assaulted the wall, but was driven 
back and their general was slain. The Turks 
struck off his head and then flung the body over 
the wall, to be devoured by the dogs that swarm 
about every Turkish settlement. An English 
sailor on the admiral's ship heard of the indignity 
to the French general, and remembering the kind- 
ness shown himself when some years before he 
was in a French prison, decided to rescue the body 
and give it Christian burial. For this purpose he 



146 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

obtained leave to go ashore, and equipped with 
pick and shovel he dug the grave, being all the 
while exposed to the fire of the enemy. When he 
returned from his self-imposed task, Sir Sidney, 
the admiral, summoned him to his cabin, and said, 
"1 hear you have buried the French general." 

'*Yes, your Honor." 

"Had you any assistance?" 

"Yes, your Honor." 

"I understood you had nobody with you." 

"But I had, your Honor." 

"Ah, who had you?" 

"God Almighty, sir." 

It is no wonder that a man, common sailor 
though he was, who realized himself in the Divine 
presence like that, was impelled to a mission, from 
which others who think little about God would 
not have dreamed of undertaking. Such changes, 
changes in relationships and changes in character, 
are part of the Christian life, and flow directly 
from the great change which we call conversion. 

This change grows out of a radical change in 
the human heart. The idea that a man can change 
himself by adopting a new philosophy, or by mak- 
ing a fresh set of moral resolutions, is erroneous. 
No such explanation will account for the power of 
the Christian faith in these twenty centuries. 
Theories and philosophies may restrain, and may 
even cause some degree of amandment, but they 
do not convert. When you read Sallust's introduc- 
tions to his histories you might regard him a 
saint until you check his words up with other his- 
tories which display him as utterly dissolute and 
immoral. Byron was a master poet, but his life 



THE SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 147 

was corrupt. Yet how pure and tender and wor- 
shipful are his Hebrew melodies. If the mere 
patching together of virtuous phrases, and the 
utterance of pious sentiments could make Chris- 
tians, we might find budding apostles in every 
county jail. 

The Bible is the best authority on conversion, 
and it tells us that religion mends life by cleansing 
the heart. The Spirit of God cleanses the foun- 
tain, and when that has been done pure waters 
flow. Hear the word of Paul on this, '7 am cruci- 
fied with Christ: nevertheless I live, yet not I, but 
Christ liveth in me/' (Gal. 2: 20). Analyze that 
thought, ''crucified with Christ." On the cross of 
Calvary was death ; death of the Son of God, but 
also death of the curse of the law, death of the 
power of the law, and death of sin and of the 
power of sin. Paul, who through faith was par- 
taker of Christ's crucifixion, became dead to sin 
and all sinful associations. Scattered all through 
his epistles we find allusions to this idea, which 
was a favorite with him. It appears in this phrase 
in Romans, ''Knowing that our old man is crucified 
with him." (Rom. 6:6). The same thought is 
found again in Galatians, where he speaks of the 
Lord Jesus, ''By whom the world is crucified unto 
me, and I unto the world.'' (Gal. 6: 14). And so 
we have it in the familiar hymn, 

"Free from the law, happy condition, 
Jesus hath bled and there is remission; 
Cursed by the law and bruised by the fall, 
Grace hath redeemed me once for all." 

But there is more than this for the Christian. 
After death then life. As there was death on the 



148 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

cross, so there was life when the Savior on the 
resurrection morn burst the bars of death and 
triumphed over the grave. The convert who dies 
to the world is ready to be raised with Christ in 
glory, ready to have Christ in him the hope of 
glory. Christ comes to him. He enters the soul. 
He rules the life. He becomes an abiding spirit- 
ual presence. From that moment sin hath no more 
dominion over the trusting disciple. How beauti- 
fully the Scripture teaches of the indwelling 
Christ. '7 am the vine/' so says Jesus, ''ye are 
the branches/' What is the interpretation? The 
branch lives and grows and blossoms and bears 
fruit so long as it draws its life from the vine. 
So Jesus continues, ''As the branch cannot bear 
fruit except it abide in the vine, no more can ye 
except ye abide in me." (John 15: 4). How like 
that is the apostle's word, "The life which I now 
live in the flesh I live\ by the faith of the Son of 
God." (Gal. 2 : 20) . John in the Revelation teaches 
to the same effect, speaking the word of the Mas- 
ter, "Behold I stand at the door and knock." (Rev. 
3: 20). It is the King coming to His kingdom. 
Heart, fling wide that door! All joy when the 
Lord Christ enters and enthrones Himself in the 
Christian's soul. So in another familiar passage 
Paul speaks of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, 
the spiritual presence. Thus he asks, "Know ye 
not that ye are the temple of God, and that the 
Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (1 Cor. 3: 16). 
And he emphasizes his admonition in the verse 
which follows, "For the temple of God is holy, 
v)hich temple ye are." (1. 17). The thought here 
is that after the glory had departed from Zion, 



THE SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 149 

and the Shekinah ceased to flood the Mercy Seat 
in the Holy of Holies with its splendid radiance 
the Spirit now will come to the believer, a refresh- 
ing guest to take up its abode in his worshipful 
soul. Where that spiritual presence is found we 
may expect a brighter hope, a loftier ideal, and the 
purer life. 

But there is another thought, one which should 
be sufficient of itself for a Sabbath Day's reflec- 
tion : namely, that if Christ in spiritual presence 
is dwelling in the Christian's soul he is under the 
influence of the direct personality of the Savior. 
As yet we know little of the human mind and its 
strange reactions. A weaker mind often submits 
to the leadership of some stronger mind. Nothing 
is more common than the overriding of personal- 
ity. If the history of crime is carefully traced it 
will appear that the most of the wicked — ^the rob- 
bers, the burglars, the murderers — have been tools 
in the hand of a stronger intelligence. Shakes- 
peare shows this in his Macbeth, where the woman 
dominates. She stirs her mate's ambition, she 
pushes him on to regicide, she sustains him 
against the stings of memory and conscience. 
Such analogies assist in understanding the domi- 
nation of a better personality. Where Christ 
dwells within His disciple, the disciple yields to 
the master power of Christ. The nearer he lives 
to his Savior, the more will the Savior's glorious 
character be reflected in his mind and in his con- 
duct. Such a Christian will work the works of 



150 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

Christ, think with the thought of Christ, and 
reach out the helping hand with the gentleness of 
Christ. It is glory for any soul who can honestly 
say with the apostle, '7 live, yet not I, hut Christ 
liveth in me/' 



THE SUPREME TRAGEDY 



IX, 
THE SUPREME TRAGEDY 

CHRIST is the central personage of the Scrip- 
ture revelation. The Bible presents Him 
as the Savior of sinners and represents His 
death for sinners as the central point in His plan 
of salvation. The destiny of the human race 
balances on Calvary and the cross of the suffering 
Savior. 

Some who fail to see these truths clearly mini- 
mize the importance of the cross while they lay 
greater stress upon the Master's life and teaching. 
To them the death of Jesus was a comparatively 
obscure event. But it is well to remember that 
the natural estimate of events and circumstances 
is not the fit measure of the historical perspective. 
Athens was a famous name in history. She was 
the capital of classical culture, and she still reigns 
as queen of literature and art. And yet in actual 
extent of territory she was insignificant enough. 
All her lands which she governed in the days of 
her power could be set down in one of our western 
counties, which would still own a broad belt all 
about her. The Rubicon, which counts for so much 
in the annals of Rome, the memorable river into 
which great Caesar plunged, and Rome was free 
no more, is in fact merely an insignificant stream 
which a boy can wade. No, our historical values 
cannot be estimated with regard to magnitudes 



154 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

and scenic grandeur. When it came to the giving 
forth of the Ten Commandments, words of ines- 
timable worth, they were delivered, not in some 
magnificent temple of Memphis or Heliopolis, but 
in the desolation and solitude of the Sinaitic 
wilderness. Christ the promised Messiah descends 
to the earth. He borrows no honors from the pal- 
aces of luxury, no approbation from proud priests 
and haughty princes. He is the child of poverty, 
not of riches. He is born, not in Jerusalem the 
great and holy, but in little Bethlehem. He is 
cradled in no splendid heirloom of royal magnifi- 
cence, but in the feeding trough of the stable. And 
yet His presence could shed honor upon that. Were 
that stone feeding trough now to be discovered 
and identified it would have a price in the market 
better than if it were of solid gold, and set with the 
blaze of rubies and diamonds. And so with Cal- 
vary. It was but a little hill, a mere knob of the 
earth, and not to be compared with the dignity of 
Moriah or of Zion. Its true position is still so 
doubtful that the matter is a subject of contro- 
versy to this hour, and yet historically considered 
it towers above the highest ranges of the Andes or 
the Himalayas. 

Speak of power, then Calvary shall be its token. 
He who said, ''And I, if I be lifted up from the 
earth, ivill draw all men unto me;'' (John 12 : 32) , 
from that cross has been summoning the nations. 
What dry eyes have filled with tears, what stony 
hearts have melted with love, from contemplation 
of the suffering Christ. Unwelcome duty never 
twined the cable for lifting man upward like the 
silken cord of that tender recollection. Or one 




THE SUPREME TRAGEDY 155 

may recite instances of remarkable affection. He 
might tell of that eastern princess, who nursed the 
English knight from his wounds and fever in her 
Syrian tent in the time of the Crusades, and who 
when he had bidden her farewell and rode away 
followed him all the journey to his western home. 
She knew but two words of his language : London, 
his city ; and Gilbert, his name. But love led, she 
made her way to the west, through Italy and 
France and across the Channel with her word, 
London ; and when she had reached the town, she 
went through the streets calling, Gilbert, Gilbert, 
till she found her knight and a welcome to his 
home and life. Or, one might speak of the mother, 
perishing in the wintry snow, who to save her 
babe stripped off her own garments and wrapped 
them about the child, and was later found cold and 
frozen but with a living babe in her arms. But 
the love of Christ was richer by far than these. 
Paul gives some estimate of it when he says that 
^'while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,'' 
(Rom. 5:8). 

Or, there may be thought of mercy. The world 
delights to think of that great man, Abraham Lin- 
coln, who made it his rule to listen every day to 
some petition which involved the saving of life. 
Senators and foreign ambassadors might cool 
their heels in the anteroom while waiting to see 
the President, when he was hearing the plea of 
some wife or mother for husband or son. And 
yet of all the mercy known to man it is the mercy 
of the cross which supplies the supreme example. 
There on the cross was the Christ, tortured with 
thirst and agony, but while persecutors were rag- 



156 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

ing His heart was overflowing with divine com- 
passion. They mock at His suffering, but listen! 
He is praying for them. The one malefactor 
repents and pleads for remembrance when Christ 
comes to His kingdom, and Jesus from the cross 
gives him the pledge of paradise. blessed cross 
of adorable compassion ! 

"Here 111 sit forever viewing 

Mercy's streams in streams of blood: 
Precious drops, my soul bedewing, 
Plead and claim! my peace with God." 

Not only should the Christian feel his obligation 
to Calvary: he should know its true relation to 
the world of life and thought. Often those of us 
who are familiar with the ground of some region 
find the mapmakers very exasperating, when on 
consulting the chart we see that the draftsman 
has given a highway a sharp curve to the right, 
when we know that at that point the road turns 
to the left ; or when he has set some town that we 
are interested in three or four miles out of the 
way. But how replete with such blunders is the 
map of religious thought! How frequently does 
some religious teacher, who has been plotting his 
religious chart more from his imagination than 
from the sure measurements of the Bible, get Cal- 
vary too close to the Mount of Retributive Justice, 
and too remote from the fountain of grace. And 
how frequently again is it removed from the 
vicinage of Jerusalem, a city of habitation, 
where its blessings may flow forth to the multi- 
tude, and is marked for some barren wilderness 
far away, as if it had been ordained for none but 
monks and hermits of the desert. 



THE SUPREME TRAGEDY 157 

Here it is of all places that we desire correct 
interpretation and the clear outlook. We should 
survey Christ's atoning work as God has revealed 
it in the Scripture. We want no false bounds to 
its scope or its efficacy. We would see Calvary 
itself, and its significance as set forth in the Gos- 
pel. We would know, if possible, not only that 
Christ died for sinners, but also the underlying 
reason. For such an investigation we may set 
three principal postulates to guide the pathway 
of thought : that Christ died for sinners, that He 
went the way of death willingly, and that He went 
willingly in the voluntary laying down of His life. 

Respecting this matter Christ in one of His 
addresses to the disciples told them plainly, 'Wo 
vian taketh it from me, hut I lay it down of my- 
self.'' (John 10: 18). Here was a forward look 
by the Savior to the approaching death of the 
cross. It is the solid truth of the Word that 
Christ died for sinners. When we contemplate this 
great truth which gleams out through all the Gos- 
pel, we are humiliated to the dust, and then 
exalted to the heavens. We are humiliated at the 
waywardness of the race, shamed that man has 
wandered so far from the favor of God, shamed 
at the enormity of other men's sin, and at the 
enormity of our own, which rendered it necessary 
for the Son of God to bare His back to the smiters 
for us, and be sent to the cross for us, He dying 
that we might live. But again, when we glance 
at the other side and realize how Christ has res- 
cued us out of the pit of iniquity, how He has 
borne our sins and healed our sicknesses ; how he 
has taken poor, struggling humanity by the hand 



158 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

of love, and clothed us all anew and led us to the 
bosom of the Father, and made possible and actual 
our dreams of eternal life, then we rejoice with 
joy that is unspeakable and full of glory. 

But what is the basis of this glorious hope? It 
is truly and simply the actual suffering and death 
of the Son of God. The Scripture presents the 
several steps of this humiliation of the Savior, 
through which we receive the consummation of 
eternal life. 

First there is the incarnation. Respecting this 
John declares that the Word was made fxesh, or in 
the better rendering, the Word became flesh. The 
Son of God was born as the son of Mary. How 
surprising this descent! The apostle Paul says 
of it, ''He made himself of no reputation, and took 
upon him the form of a servant/' (Phil. 2:7). 
There in Bethlehem Mary folds to her heart the 
babe, whom kings from the east adore. Well may 
they offer princely gifts of gold and myrrh and 
frankincense, for this is the King of kings and 
liOrd of lords. In this child is seen the remarkable 
union of the human and the divine. The Pharisees 
could not grasp that great thought, but their 
incompetence is no argument against the truth. 
One day Jesus staggered His opponents, who had 
come to Him in a conspiracy to put Him to shame 
in His teaching, but putting to them the question, 
''What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?'' They 
replied as they had read in their Scriptures, "The 
son of David." And then He continued, "How then 
doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying. The 
Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right 
hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool?" 



THE SUPREME TRAGEDY 159 

And that word He followed by the still more con- 
fusing question, '7/ David then call him Lord, how 
is he his son?'' (Matt. 22 : 42-44) . There were com- 
plications in the mission of the Messiah, as shown 
in their own Bible which they had never taken into 
account. So they were unable to answer, and 
they were the ones who were shamed, and not He. 
But we through the help of the Gospels can catch 
the meaning and resolve the intricacy of the mys- 
tery. For as Christ was bom of Mary, a daughter 
of the line of David, He was in the direct line of 
descent from David the king. But on the other 
side, since He was the Son of God, the Lord from 
heaven. He was David's Lord, according to the 
Scripture. 

The humanity of Jesus is to be understood 
rightly when we consider it as a real humanity. 
The Scripture names Him our brother, our elder 
brother, and these terms make this human rela- 
tionship evident. It was because He was human 
like ourselves that we realize that He could be 
tempted. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews 
explains Jesus' competency as our great High 
Priest on this basis, saying, "For we have not an 
high priest which cannot he touched with the feel- 
ing of our infirmities: hut was in all points 
tempted like as we are, yet without sin.'' (Heb. 
4:15). 

Then also this real humanity of Jesus was taber- 
nacled in an actual human body. One of the early 
heresies was a denial of this truth. Right in the 
time of the apostles there were some who went 
about denying that Christ had come in the flesh ; 
some of them denying that He had come at all, 



160 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

and some denying that He had come in the body. 
They argued that the Lord could not have stooped 
so low as to live in a body composed of flesh and 
blood, so that if He came at all, it must have been 
in the appearance of a body and not a real body at 
all. But where would a view like that take us? Be- 
fore we start off on a journey it is of interest to 
make sure that we shall not fetch up in some bog- 
hole, but shall reach some pleasant and acceptable 
destination. But this notion of Christ's body 
being an appearance of a body would take Jesus 
out of the range of humanity. Were it true it 
would be idle to claim Him as the Second Adam, 
connected by blood relationship to the first Adam, 
and to all the human race to its ultimate genera- 
tion. Let such a notion as that be established, 
and there would be no ground for the outworking 
of a real atonement. 

But there is another objection to the opinion 
that the body of Christ was not a really human 
body, since such a conclusion would involve His 
whole life on the earth into a series of deceits and 
false pretences. This age of ours is a hater of 
shams and it could never bring itself into sympa- 
thy with a sham so elaborate as that, the presenta- 
tion of a life to parallel ours, to pretend to be like 
ours, and yet to be in all respects a life of preten- 
tion. This age could not approve of a simulation 
of hunger and thirst and pain that were not real, 
but merely assumed in order to produce an effect. 
None of us could be lifted to a higher and more 
spiritual life by a career that was in fact decep- 
tion from beginning to end. But John disposes of 
all that in summary fashion. His Christ is a 



THE SUPREME TRAGEDY 161 

Christ of realities. All His hungerings, all His 
wearinesses and faintings, all His discourage- 
ments and griefs were actual and real. And He 
branded as an enemy any man who sought to deny 
the reality of all these experiences. He is em- 
phatic in His speech when He says, ''Many deceiv- 
ers are entered into the world, who confess not 
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a 
deceiver and an anti-christJ' (2 John 7). 

Another step in the investigation brings us to 
the thought that since Christ's body was a real 
body it was possible for Him to die. Consequently 
we are to understand that His dying was also a 
reality. Here again we are approaching dark and 
inscrutable questions. Who can comprehend what 
it is to pass through the hour and article of death? 
To do so would require a complete understanding 
of life in all its relations and as yet we are only 
on the threshold of that. But we can comprehend 
that as life is the manifestation of an invisible 
spirit linked into practical union with a visible 
body, so death is the rending asunder of those ties 
so that the spirit departs and leaves the body 
behind. While the spirit rules in the mortal 
frame it bids the heart continue to throb, it sends 
the blood coursing through the arterial system and 
draws it back to the life centers through the veins, 
it casts out worn out tissues and assimilates new 
tissues, it strengthens and recuperates and ener- 
gizes these fleeting particles of perishing dust in 
such control that they seem endowed with strength 
and life. But when the spirit fails then life fails, 
and when the spirit takes its departure the body 
returns to dissolution and falls back to its parental 



162 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

dust. And something of that change came to the 
Savior. One moment He was living. He was 
enduring the rage of His persecutors. He suf- 
fered the jibes of careless by-standers. He experi- 
enced all the pain of humiliation and the dagger 
thrusts of bodily agony. And when He had borne 
it all to the end He exclaimed, ''It is finished/' 
and yielded up the spirit. When the spirit de- 
parted the change was death. The soldiers who 
came expecting to deal the death stroke found Him 
dead. They reported Him as dead to Pilate, who 
was surprised that the end had come so soon. So 
the death of Christ was a real death. And it was 
just so much more death than the like event which 
is our common lot, as the Savior's perfect body 
was more sound and healthful than these bodies of 
ours. Disease enfeebles the body. The aged, 
whose natural powers have yielded under the 
strife of years, sometimes drop away with not so 
much as a struggle or a moan. But it is difficult 
for the strong to die. The more active all the 
vital forces, so much the more the tenacious the 
grip of the spirit to the body and of body to spirit. 
And we may well believe that the body of Jesus 
was strong. The record does not anywhere mention 
Him as suffering a moment from illness. The 
Paschal lamb was without spot or blemish, and 
this was the physical type of the Savior, a type 
pre-figuring His immaculate morality, and we may 
also believe His wholesome health of the physical 
nature. He had power to lay down that life, that 
life so full, so vigorous ; but it involved a struggle. 
And that struggle He faced with resolution. They 
would have reached to His lips the stupefying 



THE SUPREME TRAGEDY 163 

draught which would have lessened the trial, but 
would have none of it. He proposed to tread 
the wine press of suffering alone. And He died 
alone, in a passion of forsakenness and loneliness. 
Can we realize the depth of that suffering in our 
behalf? 

"His name is Jesus, and He died 
For guilty sinners, crucified: 
Content to die that He might win 
Their ransom from the death of sin. 
No sinner worse than I can be, 
Therefore I know He died for me." 

Christ died willingly. This proposition combats 
two errors : the first, that Christ died by compul- 
sion from man ; the second, that He died by com- 
pulsion from God. In these days we are frequent- 
ly hearing Jesus extolled as dying the martyr 
death; the true man, battling against a world of 
lies and overborne by their momentum. He is 
sometimes represented as weak and helpless ; as a 
noble reformer, who lifted up His voice in an evil 
day, with a speech that was too bold for His hear- 
ers; that He provoked enmities which He was 
powerless to allay, and that His untimely chal- 
lenge of prevalent iniquities roused a storm of 
indignation which swept Him to death. Those 
who picture Him thus would have us view Him as 
submissive when hope was dead, and silent be- 
cause His projects had been crushed beyond rem- 
edy. But this cannot be the representation of the 
Gospels. In the Gospel story one may see hatreds 
deep and bitter, and the encompassing nets of 
treachery, and the mounting wrath of the priestly 
class, and the plots of crafty officialdom to entrap 



164 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

and destroy Him. All that part of it is true 
enough and no one desires to disclaim its faithful- 
ness to the facts. But Jesus crushed ! Christ over- 
whelmed ! The Savior forced to His death ! That 
would be misrepresentation. There was not power 
enough lodged in the whole body of the Jews who 
were crowded into Jerusalem for the Passover 
feast, and there was more than a million of them 
— not power enough in them all to have harmed a 
hair of the Savior's head save by His full and free 
consent. When men sought to destroy Him before 
His time was come they found all their subtle 
plans vain and fruitless. They picked up stones 
to kill Him as He was teaching in the temple. One 
moment He was there before them, but the next 
He was not seen, and they hunted Him all about 
the usual places, but He was not to be found. At 
Nazareth they seized Him in the synagogue, and 
rushed Him to the brow of the hill on which their 
city was built, with intent to cast Him over, but 
suddenly He was gone, and they knew, not where. 
E]ven when they were nailing him to the cross, had 
He been so minded He could have summoned 
twelve legions of angels to the rescue, and have 
come down from the cross with not so much as a 
wound to deface His sacred person. That is the 
meaning of His word when He said of His life, 
'Wo man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of 
myself/' Only when He delivered Himself freely 
to their rage and malice was it possible for men to 
bind Him, to scourge Him, and to crucify Him. 

But if men did not compel Jesus to His death, 
no more was He compelled to it on the part of 
God. That expression, 'Wo man taketh it from 



THE SUPREME TRAGEDY 165 

me/' is more forcible than it seems. The revision 
presents it better in the rendering, 'Wo one taketh 
it from me." This signifies that men did not force 
Christ to the cross, and that no other power forced 
Him there. It would be well if the modern church 
would rid itself of the notion which too much 
vogue in past days that there was ever any differ- 
ence or disagreement in the divine counsels over 
the great work of human redemption. We are 
getting away from the thought of God being 
wrathful against His children. God is not a God 
of wrath, but of infinite love; and it was the 
yearning of infinite love, and with adulteration of 
wrathfulness that prompted the sending of the 
Savior with the message of peace and salvation. 
And while God was planning in infinite love for 
the Son to descend on the mission of grace, the 
Son was willing to live and to suffer, if by such 
means man could be brought to his senses and 
accept the Gospel. The whole ministry of Jesus is 
v/itness of His willingness to suffer. Time and 
again He declares that He is to suffer many 
things of the chief priests and the elders, that He 
is to be crucified and that He is to rise again on 
the third day. As the shadow of the cross was 
lengthening over His pathway He did not attempt 
to escape it, but went up to Jerusalem, where His 
foes were the most numerous and the most hate- 
ful. In the rush of the impending crisis, when Hii^ 
spirit was passing through the cloud of trouble, 
though He saw the cross looming up before Him 
He went firmly forward, saying to Pilate, "To this 
end was I horn, and for this cause came I into the 



166 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

world, that I should bear witness unto the truth/' 
(John 18: 37). 

At the Last Supper, when He knew the heart of 
Judas, and that He had been trafficing with the 
chief priests to betray Him, He made no effort to 
dissuade him, but to the contrary dismissed him 
to the despicable errand with the word, ''That 
thou doesty do quickly/' (John 13 : 27) . The band 
of the High Priest came to the garden at midnight. 
They were conspicuous with their staves and flam- 
ing torches. Nothing could have been easier than 
for Jesus, if He willed it, to elude them in the 
darkness and escape. But there was no attempt 
to (scape. He went forward to meet them and 
placed Himself in their hands. And in all that 
followed there was not an act, not a breath to sug- 
gest Him as being crushed or overwhelmed. All 
the way He was, calm, the one calm soul, though 
the victim of a whirlwind of tempestuous passion. 
He was calm before the Sanhedrin, He was calm 
before Herod, calm before Pilate, and calm on the 
cross. True, He fainted on the way to Calvary, 
but that was the exhaustion of nature, not the 
failure of loving purpose. No. From first to last 
Christ's face was set willingly toward the cross. 
No man took His life ; He laid it down of Himself. 
When we think of Him thus as uncomplaining, of 
His permitting His foes to mistreat Him as they 
would; silent, pitiful, forgiving; and then remem- 
ber the purpose of it all. His life for our life, we 
may well exclaim with Rousseau in that word 
which is all the more impressive because extorted 
by admiration from the lips of unbelief, "Socrates 



THE SUPREME TRAGEDY 167 

died like a philosopher, but Jesus Christ like a 
God." 

But there are some declarations of the Scrip- 
ture which bear directly on Christ's dying willing- 
ly in the voluntary surrender of His life. When 
the evangelists came to the culmination of the 
supreme tragedy they were very choice in their 
terms of expression. No one of the four contents 
himself with merely saying that Jesus died, and in 
place of that simple statement they all make use 
of terms which imply death, but which also make 
clear that the death was voluntary in the final act. 
Mark and Luke agree in saying that He "breathed 
out,'' or as we have it translated, that He "gave 
up the ghost." Matthew puts it with still greater 
force when he says, "he sent away the spirit." But 
John, as might be expected, makes the still clearer 
statement that He "delivered over the spirit." 
Augustine, the great leader of the African church, 
commenting on these suggestive expressions, de- 
clares of Christ that He gave up His life. Quia 
voluit, because He pleased; quando voluit, when 
He pleased, and quomodo voluit, in what manner 
He pleased. 

The events of that day of the Supreme Tragedy 
sustain the suggestions of the evangelists as to 
our Lord's voluntary surrender of His life. 

The cross, as we know, was not merely the 
instrument of death but also of unspeakable tor- 
ture. The orient has been lavish in its devices by 
which death could be produced in inches, dragging 
outraged nature to the verge of the precipice of 
death, and then retarding the moment when death 
gives relief from unspeakable agony. Of these 



168 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

devices the cross was the most terrible. With the 
ingenuity of the bottomless pit its inventor ar- 
ranged that no wound inflicted upon the victim 
should touch any vital part. A support was pro- 
vided for the body, so that its weight should not 
drag upon the quivering hands and feet. The 
spikes that were driven through these members 
prevented loss of blood, though every nerve was 
thrilling with agony. The sufferer was exposed 
for hours to the blaze of a semi-tropical sun, beat- 
ing upon his defenceless head, and his whole frame 
was tortured with pain and shock, with conges- 
tions and fiery inflamations and burning thirst. 
But death tarried long. Cases on record show 
that frequently the crucified lingered for days 
before dying. Josephus tells of some who were on 
the cross even longer than the Savior, and who 
nevertheless were taken down and recovered. But 
in Judea, because of the scruples of the people it 
was necessary that death should occur before 
nightfall. And so when the Romans practiced 
this form of judicial punishment in Judea, they 
adopted the expedient of breaking the legs of the 
crucified in the afternoon with heavy hammers, 
and so by added shock hastening the end. 

We also recall that Jesus died at the ninth 
hour; that is, at three o'clock in the afternoon. 
His early death was a surprise. It was a surprise 
to the soldiers, for when they came to break the 
legs of the sufferers, though both the malefactors 
were living, Jesus was dead. It was a surprise to 
Pilate, for when Joseph of Arimathea went to the 
governor to beg the body of Jesus Pilate marveled 
that he was dead already. In fact, so great was 



THE SUPREME TRAGEDY 169 

his surprise that he would not accept the word of 
Joseph, but sent for the centurion who was in 
charge of the execution, and only when the cen- 
turion confirmed the fact, did he make out the 
order for tlie delivery of the body. 

But while the early death of Jesus was a sur- 
prise, so also was the manner of the death. From 
what has been stated, in the case of death by the 
cross the end followed extreme exhaustion. The 
vital forces gave way after prolonged suffering. 
The close therefore in the nature of things would 
come with weakness, faintness, and torpor, the 
life finally going out as the candle flame flickers 
and expires when the light has burned down to the 
socket. But that was not the case in the death of 
Jesus. All His energies were alert to the very last. 
He exhibited no lack of strength, no wandering 
of the mental faculties. When the supreme mo- 
ment came He spoke. The tone was not the feeble 
breath of exhaustion : it was an outcry. Three of 
the evangelists describe it as a loud outcry. And 
the language of that outcry was significant and in 
full conformity with our conclusion as to His will- 
ing death. Hear Him say, ''It is finished. Father 
into thy hands I commend my spirit/' How else 
shall these words be interpreted than to mean 
that at that supreme moment He willed to die, to 
lay down His life, to deliver over the spirit to the 
Father? 

Other circumstances combine to support this 
view. When the soldiers came and found Him 
dead, one of them lifted his broad lance and thrust 
it into the Savior's side, and at that, so says the 
record, ''forthwith came there out blood and 



170 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

water/' What has physiological science to offer 
as to this phenomenon? Science recognizes that 
there can be actual breaking of the heart, a rup- 
ture of the organ, which brings speedy death. 
Among those who are known to have died of a 
heart that had burst open were a Duchess of 
Brunswick, Dr. Abercrombie of Edinburgh, and 
King George II of England. When death comes 
under this form it is commonly under the shock 
of some sudden and overwhelming joy or sorrow; 
the death is sudden ; it is attended with loud out- 
cry, and the blood which pours out into the peri- 
cardium, the sack that encloses the heart, forms in 
heavy clots that float in a watery serum. And so 
the incidents of the cross seem to point to the 
Savior's having died from a broken heart. the 
burden and the grief of it ! What weight of agony 
and scorn He suffered ! What humiliation to have 
come with the offer of divine salvation, and to be 
received with hatred and persecution! What 
grief to know that with so many of them all that 
He was offering would not touch their hardened 
consciences ! All this Jesus was bearing together 
with sorrow for the sins of the sinful world. He 
was bearing the weight of all human sin in the 
past, the weight of the sins of those that were then 
on the earth, the sin of the Roman soldiers, the 
sin of Pilate, the sin of the High Priest, the sins 
of the whole nation, and the sins of all men ini all 
the ages that were still to come. All this burden 
lay heavily upon Him. Hence the darkness. Hence 
the feeling of forsakenness. All this He bore for 
us till the fulness of time was come, until every 
requirement of law, and of prophecy, and of grace 



THE SUPREME TRAGEDY 171 

was complete ; until all was done that omnipotent 
mercy could accomplish for the redemption of 
humanity without coercing its freedom, and then 
He surrendered the burden and relaxed the earth- 
ly life. 

" 'Tis finished, so the Savior cried, 
And meekly bowed His head and died. 
'Tis finished, Yes, the race is run. 
The battle fought, the victory won." 

Jesus died. What should that teach us respect- 
ing man's imperative need? God fits His means 
to the ends required. There are no wastes in the 
divine administration. But if, as the Scriptures 
teach, "It must needs be that Christ should suf- 
fer," how shall it be with those who reject the 
offered mercy? If this Jesus be God's remedy for 
the sins of men, where else shall they look for 
helping? 

Jesus died. How great the gift of God, for He 
did not die in vain. The remedy which God offers 
is ample. Whoever comes to Him in penitence 
will be received. He will smite the chains of our 
captivity and restore our spiritual freedom. And 
how shall we use our freedom but in living for 
Him, following in His footsteps, and doing the 
works He bids us in willing and uttermost devo- 
tion! 



HEADSHIP IN THE CHURCH 



X. 

HEADSHIP IN THE CHURCH 

WHEN Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, was 
carrying the Gospel to the Jews in their 
synagogues in the principal cities of 
Asia Minor, he made his proclamation of the new 
church which was to supplant and replace every 
other form of religion, that of the Jews no less 
than of the others. This new company of believ- 
ers composed an absolutely new institution in the 
earth ; new in its relation to the civil government, 
from which unlike all the rest it was free and inde- 
pendent. All other religions were national, and 
were controlled more or less from the throne. The 
Judaism of Moses was a state religion, and in the 
time of our Lord the Roman authorities, who were 
ruling in Palestine, dictated who should be the 
High Priest, and they kept a detachment of Roman 
soldiers in the tower at the corner of the temple 
inclosure, so that in case of any disturbance rising 
within the temple these soldiers could rush down 
and restore the peace. But the new faith of Jesus 
had no such entangling alliances and wished for 
none. 

The faith was new again in that it contemplated 
universal extension. It has been said of Judaism 
that it was a tribal faith, and that the Jehovah 
of the Jews was a tribal God. There is truth in 
the first part of the statement, but the second is to 



176 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

be characterized as one of the fantastic aberra- 
tions of Teutonic scholarship. Judaism was tribal 
insofar as it was professed mainly by Jews, 
although from the time of Ezekiel forward many 
Gentiles became proselytes to Judaism and were 
received into the Jewish fold. But Jehovah was no 
tribal God in the sense intended by those who 
apply that term. He was the One God, the Living 
God, the God of all the earth, and all men were His 
children. That sweet Bible story of Ruth, one of 
the charming idyls of literature, has for its cen- 
tral teaching the truth that God is the God of all 
nations. For Ruth was married to Boaz, and was 
incorporated into that sacred line from which 
Christ was to be born. There was nothing to shut 
her out from the love of God, even though she was 
a daughter of Moab. And Paul gives no doubt as 
to the universality of the new teaching. For as 
lie declared in the Colossian letter, in this new 
faith, ''There is neither Greek, nor Jew, circum- 
cision, nor nncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, 
bond nor free; but Christ is all, and in all/' (Col. 
5:11). 

And the new faith was new furthermore in that 
its leaders were assured of world conquest. No 
such claim had ever been made before. As the 
haughty Romans advanced in the course of their 
victories over the nations they carried their own 
worship with them, but they made no effort to 
force it upon the conquered. They did not expect 
other nations to set up Roman altars. When 
Alexander was marching across Asia to the bank 
of the Indus he did not impose his worship upon 
the Brahmins, nor did he care how his subject 



HEADSHIP IN THE CHURCH 177 

races conducted their devotions. But the mission- 
aries of the cross had the world-wide ambition. 
They were not to rest till all the continents, and 
even the isles of the sea, had heard and accepted 
the Gospel. Before their eyes was the vision of 
the Savior, not now the Sufferer, but the universal 
Governor, the Conqueror, to whom every knee 
should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus 
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 

It was such a Christ whom Paul announced to 
the church at Colosse as the Head over the body, 
the church. He spoke in the same strain to the 
Fiphesians at the culmination of a fervid passage 
in praise of Jesus, whom he names the ''Head over 
the church in all things.'' (Eph. 1 : 23) . The glori- 
fied Redeemer has many titles of high honor in 
the New Testament. In the first letter to Timothy 
Jesus is called the ''One Mediator between God and 
man." (1 Tim. 2:5). John in his first epistle 
styles Him our "Advocate with the Father.'' (1 
John 2:1). And the same apostle, in the Revela- 
tion, pictures Him in His majesty, and as having 
"on his vesture and on his thigh a name written. 
King of Kings and Lord of Lords/' (Rev. 19 : 16). 
But while all these titles are tributes to the Sav- 
ior's power and authority, the believer has special 
interest in Christ's being Head of the body, the 
church. For he considers the relation of the head 
to the human body. In the headship of Christ over 
the church he reads the several implications of the 
Lord as Founder of His church, as the Supreme 
Governor of the church, as the Particular Friend 
of the church, and as the capable Protector of the 
church. 



178 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

We may consider for a moment the Head of the 
church in the attitude of being its Founder. It is 
right to speak of the church as Christ's church, be- 
cause He planned the church, because He laid its 
foundations, and because He called and instructed 
and ordained the disciples, whom He commis- 
sioned as missionaries to scatter the Gospel mes- 
sage to the ends of the earth. When we reflect 
upon the work of our Lord in the brief period of 
His earthly ministry, three and a half years, in 
which time He prepared the way for the church 
and gave it the vitality which made it a success, 
our minds leap to the inevitable conclusion that 
Christ Himself and no other was the Founder of 
the church. It is not to be forgotten that He spoke 
definitely of the church as "My church,'' (Matt. 
16 : 18) and the plain teaching of that phrase Paul 
confirms in his address to the brethren at Miletus, 
when he alluded to the church, which, as he says, 
''Christ hath purchased with his own precioics 
blood/' (Acts 20 : 28) . And Jesus spoke to the 
same effect in Luke, where He says of His king- 
dom, ''The law and the prophets were until John: 
since that time the kingdom of God is preached 
and every man presseth into it. (Luke 16: 16). 
In this passage the term "kingdom" is the equiv- 
alent of "church," and it seems to have been 
already established and under way, since men 
were already pressing into its fellowship. So 
natural is the thought of Christ as having founded 
His own church, that we experience the shock of 
surprise when we hear the claim that some one 
else established the kingdom. 



HEADSHIP IN THE CHURCH 179 

And yet there are many who put forth that 
strange and unnatural contention. A certain 
great church has predicated its claim for the 
primacy of Peter among the apostles on the 
assumption that Peter, and not the Lord, was the 
founder. They argue that Christ was crucified 
and buried, and that He ascended to glory before 
there was ever any Christian church, and that the 
actual Christian church was brought into being 
on the day of Pentecost, when Peter preached that 
courageous sermon, and when three thousand 
were added to the church. That being so those 
subtle theologians who press the lordly claims of 
the Roman bishop say that that was the genesis of 
the Christian church, and that Peter is to have the 
honor of giving it its form and being. When this 
argument for the exaltation of the Roman bishop 
is examined it will be found to have several flaws, 
as is always the case with any contention that is 
at variance with the truth. Suppose for the argu- 
ment's sake that Peter did preach so persuasively 
that three thousand were added to the church. Of 
course that was a fact, for the historian of the 
Acts so declares. But if three thousand were 
*'added to the church," then the church must have 
been in existence already. For it is impossible to 
add something to nothing. For Peter to have added 
ten to the church there must have been a church 
before he preached the sermon, and so it may be 
concluded that Peter^ did not found the church on 
the day of Pentecost, or on any other day. Christ 
Himself was the Founder of His church, and not 
Peter at all. But permit this thought of Peter 
founding the church to be carried still further. 



180 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

The sole ground for the claim that Peter founded 
the church on the day of Pentecost lies in the fact 
that the ingathering of three thousand was an 
event of surpassing importance, an event that 
marked a great change in church history. But 
there were other occasions that were just as im- 
portant as that. One was the occasion when in 
order to silence the complaints about the daily 
dole it was deemed necessary to reorganize the 
church by the appointment of seven new officials, 
Stephen at their head, who were named deacons. 
Another such occasion was when Peter went from 
Joppa to Caesarea, where he inaugurated a revo- 
lution in church management by baptizing the cen- 
turion Cornelius. Up to that moment none had 
been baptized into the church but Jews, and Peter 
was admitting to fellowship a Gentile, known to 
be such by his Roman name, and by his position as 
a centurion in the Roman army. And still later 
there was a great council held in Jerusalem, the 
first real council of the church, which introduces 
a novelty of church administration, and an innova- 
tion on observances, for it practically set aside 
the requirements respecting meats and the rite of 
circumcision. Every one of these occasions, the 
appointment of the deacons, the baptism of a 
Roman, and the holding of a council to settle moot 
questions of doctrine and order, was in every whit 
as notable as what Peter did on the day of Pente- 
cost. If what Peter did on the day of Pentecost is 
to be esteemed as founding the church, then each 
of the other three incidents was a founding of the 
church, which would give us four separate and 
several foundings of the church, a setting up of 



HEADSHIP IN THE CHURCH 181 

four separate and several kingdoms in the church 
in the short space of twenty-two years, a supposi- 
tion which is manifestly absurd on its face. But if 
the three suppositions are absurd, the first is no 
less so, the supposition that Peter founded the 
church; and indeed it is the crowning absurdity 
of them all. 

But it is to be remembered further that there 
are others beside Rome who are putting forth the 
claim that Peter, and not Christ, founded the 
church, for there are Protestant Christians, and 
not a few of them, either, who are saying the very 
same thing. We may not believe that such 
Protestant Christians are making this claim for 
Peter in order to support the presumptions of the 
Roman bishop. For while they are setting up 
Peter as head of the church they do not consider 
the Roman bishop at all. Their reason for their 
claim lies in some theological fancy of their own, 
which they are zealous in foisting upon the church. 
If they realized where their logic was carrying 
them it is doubtful if they would remain har- 
nessed up with that company. Let that be as it 
may, we may conclude respecting the advocates of 
the Primacy of Peter, and of any others who for 
reasons of their own are axalting Peter to the 
point of making him the Founder of the church, 
that Christ, and not Peter, established the Chris- 
tian church. 

But if Peter did not found the church on the day 
of Pentecost, what did he accomplish on that mem- 
orable day? He did precisely what the Scripture 
reports him as doing. He preached the Gospel 
effectively. He interpreted the leadings of God 



182 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

with His ancient people with fidelity. He exhorted 
the contrite Jev/s with such persuasive power that 
three thousand of them united with the church. 
That of itself was glory enough for Peter, and is 
all the glory which he would claim in the matter if 
he were here to speak in his own behalf. It is to be 
remembered that Peter was a modest soul. When 
it came to the point of martyrdom, and he was 
told that he was to be crucified, he insisted when 
he was to be nailed to the cross that it should be 
head downward, for he did not feel worthy to be 
crucified in the posture of his Lord. We may well 
imagine the man who could do that, if he were 
approached by some partisan who urged him to 
put in the claim that he had founded the church. 
One may almost hear Peter rebuking him for his 
officiousness, and using the word which Christ 
once employed for reproving him for an inconsid- 
erate remark, ''Get thee behind me, Satan, thou 
art an offence unto me; for thou savour est not the 
things that be of God, but those that be of men'^ 
Christ is the Head of the church in the sense 
that He is its supreme Governor. As He estab- 
lished it at the first, so it is His word which is its 
law. His life which is its example. His precepts 
which are its inspiration, and His promises which 
are its eternal hope. Because Christ is the supreme 
Governor in His church it cannot permit any other 
king, or lord, or usurper, by whatever name he 
may be known, to rule in His seat. The Christian 
church is the original democracy, and is to-day 
the purest example of a pure democracy that 
exists. And careful and unbiased perusal of the 
Book of Acts, which is the history of the church 



HEADSHIP IN THE CHURCH 183 

in formation, will sustain this verdict. One 
searches the New Testament in vain to discover 
any passage or incident which breathes the spirit 
of autocracy on the part of the apostles. Peter, 
James, John, Andrew, and Paul were all men of 
humble origin and simple habit. They were lead- 
ers in a great mission, and as such they were 
prominent in the Christian assemblies ; but it was 
the message which made them prominent, and not 
any supposed inherent superiority in themselves 
or in their office. They did not think of them- 
selves as masters, but merely as brethren with the 
brethren, and if any were servants it was the 
apostles themselves, who were the servants of all. 
If a special claim of apostolicity were to be put 
forth at any time, such a time was offered when 
it was decided to give the apostles more time for 
their preaching, and appointing deacons to do 
work that was less important than preaching. But 
the record plainly shows that in the appointing of 
the deacons the apostles did not assume to name 
the deacons themselves, but rather that they called 
the congregation together, explained the situation 
to them, and then, as the Scripture reports the 
incident, they said to the congregation, ''Where- 
fore brethren, look ye out among you seven men 
of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wis- 
domy whom we may appoint over this business/' 
(Acts 6:4). And so the congregation assembled, 
and made their choice of the seven, and then the 
apostles sealed the choice of the congregation by 
the ceremony of ordination. The recently discov- 
ered Teaching of the Apostles, in its fifteenth 
chapter, gives a significant passage, in which this 



184 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

direction is given to the church, ''Appoint then for 
yourselves bishops and deacons /'which shows that 
at the late period when this manual of church gov- 
ernment was issued the church was exercising 
self-government. All through the early years of 
the church there were no invidious distinctions of 
rank and class among the disciples. It was the 
first social and religious organization in which 
worldly discrimination was obliterated and for- 
gotten. It was the one place where rich and poor 
could meet and feel that they were on an equal 
footing in the sight of God. The apostle James 
found an inclination toward favoritism creeping 
into some of the church assemblies, and he rebuked 
it in that sharp message which forbade any par- 
tiality of treatment between the man "with a gold 
ring, in goodly apparel," and the "poor man, in 
vile raiment,'' (James 2:2), and directed that the 
one should have as good a seat as the other. High 
or low, rich or poor, the early church set all at the 
common level, and the sole distinction suffered 
among them was the measure in which each might 
exemplify the teaching of the Lord by his good- 
ness, humility, and service. In every city where 
a Christian church was established the manhood 
of the Christian was recognized. If a poor Chris- 
tian was far from home, a stranger in a strange 
land, he had but to report himself to any Chris- 
tian congregation to find warm hearts and ready 
hands for his relief and comfort. Outside of these 
Christian congregations a slave was a chattel, a 
thing, to be treated or mistreated like a dumb 
beast. But in the Christian assemblies the slave 
could lift up his head and feel himself a man, and 



HEADSHIP IN THE CHURCH 185 

pray and sing and prophesy with his brethren. 
And such forgetfulness of class distinctions was 
possible because Christ had taught them His love, 
and had instilled into their souls the joyful fel- 
lowship of Christian brotherhood. 

Still it must be confessed with regret that the 
enthusiasm of early Christian devotion did not 
endure as the apostles had hoped. While the 
church remained poor, and persecuted, and hum- 
ble in its devotion to the Master, it continued com- 
passionate and kind to all the servants of the 
Master. But with the getting of riches and power 
there came a change. When men of wealth or of 
high position in the state came into the member- 
ship, when the treasury was overflowing with the 
gifts of the prosperous, when stately temples were 
erected for worship, humility was crowded out by 
the spirit of exclusiveness, and brotherly fellow- 
ship was smothered under the weight of pride and 
self-conceit. In such manner little by little new 
men obtained high seats in the church, magnified 
their authority and began to lord it over God's 
heritage. In the growing worldliness of the 
church it began to assume more and more the 
organization of the imperial government. In a 
monarchical state the worldly church became itself 
monarchical, and set up its hierarchy with the one 
responsible head. In an aristocracy the worldly 
church took the aristocratic form and became an 
oligarchy, which was able to be more tyrannical 
than the church with the single authority, since 
one man can be held for his acts, while six or a 
dozen escape responsibility by thrusting the blame 
on their associates. But in any case the church 



186 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

that is organized on the monarchical or the aristo- 
cratic model is a wide departure from the simple 
and brotherly democracy of the primitive church. 
That was the pure church, the holy church, the 
church that would not accept any supreme Head 
other than Jesus Christ. 

And so it was in the last century when the min- 
isters of Scotland, who believed in a free church, 
took the heroic step in May of 1843 of withdraw- 
ing from the Established Church, they were 
returning to better acknowledgement of the 
Savior. We can remember how those holy men 
walked out of their beautiful churches, how they 
had to build them new churches by voluntary con- 
tribution, how they relinquished their stipends 
which had been paid by the state, and relied upon 
the benevolence of the faithful for their support, 
and we applaud their devout loyalty when they 
said, "We go out from an establishment which we 
loved and prized, through interference with con- 
science, the dishonor done to Christ's crown, and 
the rejection of His sole and supreme authority as 
King in His Church.'' 

Recently we have seen a marvelous breaking 
down of thrones and a casting of crowns into the 
waste basket, and all abroad there is a wonderful 
drift from autocracy toward democracy. The 
main obstruction to this wholesome movement 
comes from two sources, which are in the extreme 
of social antagonism. 

One is the impulse of radical democracy, the 
Havenothings, to reduce all society to the lowest 
terms by kicking off all who have something; a 
rule of misrule, which ends in anarchy, the paral- 



HEADSHIP IN THE CHURCH 187 

ysis of industry and ultimate famine and starva- 
tion. 

The other obstructive force is organized autoc- 
racy in the church, practical popery under what- 
ever name it may be called, and which is seeking 
to preserve its arbitrary prerogative. With this 
aim it covertly or openly throws its influence in 
support of the monarchical tendency in the state- 

The ideal for both church and state is the build- 
ing up of a real democracy in religion, the 
acknowledgment of Christ as the supreme and 
only Ruler in the church, and so through the spirit 
of brotherhood ruling in the church to promote 
that brotherliness in the state, which in the last 
issue makes for a real democracy in theory and 
practice. 

But Christ as the supreme Head of the church 
is also the Head and Source of its doctrine. This 
principle must be kept in view if the church 
wishes to preserve its doctrine sound and pure. 
In the apostolic writings there are frequent warn- 
ings to this effect. We are exhorted that ''We 
henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, 
and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by 
the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, where- 
by they lie in wait to deceive/' (Eph. 4: 14). 
Again we are bidden with Timothy to ''Hold fast 
the form of sound words, which thou hast heard 
of me in faith and love/' (2 Tim. 1 : 12) . And so 
Paul counsels Timothy to "Take heed unto thyself, 
and unto the doctrine: continue in them: for in so 
doing thou shalt both save thyself, and them that 
hear thee/' (1 Tim. 4: 16). 



188 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

This counsel has its justification in the foolish 
and dangerous alteration of Christian teaching, 
which have caused wranglings and schisms in the 
church from the beginning. The early church 
had its restless men, who wrested the faith by 
substituting variations of their own; men whom 
Paul named as ''evil men, seducers;'' and "false 
apostles, deceitful workers,'' and he warned the 
officers of the church in Ephesus of their mis- 
chievous activity, when he said to them, ''Of your 
ovjn selves shall men arise, speaking perverse 
things, to draw away disciples after them.'' His 
complaint to the Galatian churches, — '7 marvel 
that ye are so soon removed from him that called 
you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel, 
vjhich is not another:'' — (Gal. 1:6), might well 
be repeated in our day, when the faithful minister 
sees members of his flock following such will-o- 
the-wisps off into the bogs of error and unbelief. 

For such deviation there is the one sovereign 
remedy, the remembrance that Christ is still the 
Source of doctrine for His church. In the words 
of Jesus we have the body of the revised spiritual 
law. He has revealed all that it is needful for us 
to know of the spiritual life and of the spiritual 
world. And the absolute test for true doctrine, 
for a sound gospel, is its minute and detailed 
agreement v/ith the teachings of Jesus. The more 
nearly that it consorts with His word as reported 
in the first four books of the New Testament, the 
more certainly is it true and profitable for our 
spiritual progress. And the more that any pro- 
fessedly Christian teaching diverges from the 
words of Jesus, the more certainly may we know 



HEADSHIP IN THE CHURCH 189 

it for error, even though it be taught by seemingly 
good men; and whenever it goes to the length of 
presenting some novelty as a substitute for his 
teaching, the more are we privileged to condemn 
and denounce it as anti-Christ. 

Christ is the Head of the church and according- 
ly is the Friend of the believer. The earnest and 
faithful disciple comes into the closest touch with 
his Lord. The relation is one of intimate com- 
munion. Said Jesus the last night before He went 
to the cross, ''Henceforth I call you not servants, 
for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: 
but I have called you friends; for all things that 
I have heard of my Father I have made known 
unto you/' (John 15: 15). The relation betv/een 
Christ and the faithful soul is one of mutual confi- 
dence and reliance. There is a mystical union 
between the spirit of Christ and the Christian, so 
that Christ can depend on the disciple, and the 
disciple can depend on his Lord. Luther has said 
of this union with Jesus, "By faith thou art so 
glued to Christ that of thee and him there becomes 
as it were one person, so that with confidence thou 
canst say, 'I am Christ;' that is 'Christ's right- 
eousness, victory, etc., are mine.' " 

But Christ as Head of the church is its able 
Protector. This He is for the individual Christian 
and also for the church collectively. He is the 
Protector against all the enemies that may arise to 
assail the church. If ever in the world it might 
have been possible to overthrow the church it 
must have been in the day of its weakness, while 
it was still young and in the period of formation. 
Then there were marshalled against it the influ- 



190 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

ence of Judaism, with its crass hatred of Jesus; 
the power of the Roman state that was persecut- 
ing the faith and making Christian martyrs in the 
amphitheatre, and the ridicule of the philosophers 
who sought to deride the new movement out of 
existence. But not all these forces in combination 
could stay the progress of a conquering gospel. 
Julian the apostate emperor exerted all his vast 
powers to suppress Christian preaching and 
restore the glory of the old heathen ceremonial, 
but after all his efforts he confessed his failure 
in the dismal lament, "Galilean, thou hast con- 
quered." 

At the end of the eighteenth century there was 
a great stampede of the learned and influential 
toward Deism and atheism. Voltaire, the keenest 
mind of his age, turned his scathing satire and 
vitriolic sarcasm against the church as he knew 
it, and which was well deserving of much of the 
abuse it received. But what was the result? Did 
the church perish? Far from it. For the critic 
helped it to revise its ways and it became stronger 
than ever. For every writer who assailed the 
faith there were a dozen who were its champions. 
The objections to Christianity were sifted by able 
debaters and disproved in the judgment of the 
intelligent who followed the course of the great 
disputation. And of the attacks of Voltaire it 
may be said that the very press which printed his 
books in Geneva was afterward employed for 
printing the Bible. 

But Christ is the Protector of His church 
against losses. All down the ages there have been 
great leaders who have exercised an amazing in- 



HEADSHIP IN THE CHURCH 191 

fluence for the welfare of the church. They have 
preached the gospel with force and power. They 
have been wise in their measures of administra- 
tion. They have won the ardent devotion of Chris- 
tian believers, and the respect of others outside 
the church. Sometimes it has seemed that some 
of these men were essential to the existence of the 
faith, and when they have been taken away by 
death, the shock to the church has seemed more 
than it was able to bear. The heart of the church 
has almost ceased to beat. How was ever such a 
loss to the church as that of Stephen to be 
repaired? Or of Paul? Or Timothy? Or John? 
Or a Luther? Or Wesley? Or Moody? Or a 
multitude of others who might be named? But 
they passed from labor to reward, and the church 
still lived on. Christ raised up other helpers in 
their place and the gospel kept right on undis- 
mayed. And so shall it be evermore. Nothing 
shall defeat Christ's purpose in His kingdom. As 
He said to His disciples, ''Lo, I am with you alway, 
even unto the end of the world/' (Matt. 28 : 20) . 

And Christ is the Protector of the church 
against all the forces of decay and disintegration. 
Almost all human institutions have their periods 
of growth, which are followed by decline. So 
religions have flourished only to wilt and vanish 
away. Time and change have reduced their vital- 
ity, so that other cults have come to the fore and 
won the popular favor. No such dismal fate is to 
befall the church which Christ founded, and which 
is the object of His tender care. Let the centuries 
come and go, and still the same needs and yearn- 
ings of the human heart which have given Chris- 



192 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

tianity its strong appeal will continue to urge men 
to the cross. The high standards of truth and 
justice and humanity which have drawn the 
world's trust will still incline men to the Savior. 
At this moment the principles of the faith have a 
deeper grip upon human society and include a 
larger number of souls than has ever been known 
in the history of the world. This is the record in 
the lands of the highest civilization. And the 
statement holds true of the non-Christian lands. 
Only the other day a missionary in India wrote 
home that the natives were clamoring for teachers, 
and so anxious were they for schools for their 
children that whole villages were joining in the 
cry and saying that if we would send them teach- 
ers they would all become Christians. And so 
Christ and His church are overcoming the world. 
While this is true it behooves ourselves to see 
to it that He has full control of us ; that He rules 
in our hearts by faith ; that we love, and serve, and 
adore Him, so that with us and the rest of the 
world it may ever stand that 

"His power increasing still shall spread, 

His reign no end shall know: 
Justice shall guard His throne above, 
And peace abound below." 



THE KING OF KINGS 



XI. 
THE KING OF KINGS 

THE Book of Revelation stands among the 
other books of the New Testament with an 
interest that is quite its own. The reader 
here will miss the straightforward discourses and 
narratives of the Gospels, as well as the practical 
admonitions of the epistles. In their place John, 
the author, presents a shifting panorama of dis- 
solving views ; the marshalling of hosts, the rush 
and turbulence of battle, the judgment of the 
wicked, and the joy of the righteous in the tri- 
umph of their Lord. 

As one follows these chapters he may possibly 
appreciate the feeling of the devout Jew, who in 
the prophetic time attempted to catch the drift of 
some fragment of Isaiah, or Ezekiel, or Malachi. 
What kingdom would this be which is to fill the 
whole earth? What victory is this, when the 
mountain of the Lord shall be full of praise? Who 
is he that shall sit as refiner of silver and purify 
the sons of Levi? Reading such predictions the 
old-time Jew must have been awed by a sense of 
the divine Majesty, and at the same time bewil- 
dered by a sense of unreality. Of course there 
was unreality, for the prophecy was a vision. And 
visions differ from the event precisely as a picture 
differs from the object which it portrays. At the 
best it can only represent and suggest. 



196 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

Some such feeling, though in larger degree, the 
reader who follows John will experience, as the 
apostle leads to the mountain of Christian proph- 
ecy. For he opens up wider fields of contest, and 
paints with intenser shades, and on a grander 
scale. But though his tints are brilliant many a 
Christian has found the outline dim. He is baffled 
as he searches for the details which will enable 
him to fix events and determine personages. And 
there need be no wonder that this is so. For the 
Revelation is a prophecy for every age, for the age 
of the primitive church, for our age, and for all 
the ages yet to come. Indeed, it is probable that 
no man will ever understand the Revelation in its 
completeness until time shall end, and all that God 
is working out in the earth by way of discipline 
and development has been achieved. 

The character of the Revelation is an outgrowth 
of the conditions of the time. When John was 
composing it the churches were in great need of 
cheer. The hour of the Roman persecution had 
struck, and hatred of the Christians, long re- 
pressed, was whetting its sword for vengeance. 
John himself had been dragged away from his 
congregations in Ephesus and exiled to the lonely 
desolation of Patmos. Nero Caesar soon was to 
rage with all the fury of a mad beast, and the rem- 
nant of the faithful was to be driven to the wilder- 
ness. For the comfort of believers who are to seal 
their hope in Christ with martyr blood, John gives 
his assurance that tyrants will rave and persecute 
in vain, that the sword shall not destroy the people 
of God, and that the real ruler of all world powers 



THE KING OF KINGS 197 

is to be the conquering Jesus, King of Kings and 
Lord of Lords forevermore. 

And that confident declaration is profitable to 
the church of to-day. For there are battles and 
struggles now as there have been from the begin- 
ning. Sin is a smothered conflagration and is 
constantly breaking out in flame where least sus- 
pected. Civilization which breeds new diseases 
also propagates new temptations. If the faith of 
the church was once sorely tried by enthroned 
oppression it is tried no less by vice and inefficien- 
cy seated in the place of power and holding a pro- 
tecting hand over iniquity, which in consequence 
is enabled to scoff at the helplessness of the right- 
eous. As they behold the wicked growing bolder 
in their wickedness they cry, ''How long, Lord, 
how long!'' When base men are exalted there is 
question whether Satan is to hold every citadel. 
True the history of nineteen Christian centuries 
declares that sin cannot prosper, but it is a help to 
have a sure word of God to confirm our trust. 

And that is the purpose and content of the 
Revelation. Employing the most effective and the 
most impressive symbols, John advances to the 
final consummation and pronounces the absolute 
triumph of righteousness. Early in the book he 
shows the hosts of heaven riding forth to the final 
conflict. Each soldier of God rides a white horse 
and is robed in fine linen, clean and white. At 
their head rides their leader, Jesus, the Word of 
God. Here is a place for consideration of the 
symbolic language which John employs. In classic 
art the deities of mythology were represented in 
association with conventional symbols, which 



198 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

marked the province and character of each divin- 
ity. The painters called these devices "attri- 
butes/' The attributes of Mercury were the 
cadeucus and the winged sandals. The attributes 
of Venus were the snowy doves of Paphos. The 
attributes of Neptune were the trident and the 
dolphins. The attributes of Jupiter were the eagle 
and the thunderbolts. Similarly the attributes 
which John ascribed to Jesus are indicative of 
conquest. The white horse signified victory. His 
eyes were as a flame of fire: they were flaming 
with omnipotence. On His head were many 
crowns, the type of universal jurisdiction. The 
sharp sword, the winepress of wrath, and the 
numberless host which followed Him, all speak of 
a resistless onset. And the inscription on His 
vesture and His thigh was a pledge to the same 
effect, that He was to be the ruler of rulers, to 
whom every knee should bow. 

The King of Kings. This title is a declaration 
of His present glory. It is profitable for Chris- 
tians to recognize the divine royalty of the Lord. 
Many incline to think of Him mainly as He 
appeared in the day of humiliation. It is right 
that men should not forget the suffering Savior. 
There is a side of our nature to which the gospel 
appeals with great effect. No man can love Christ 
as he should till he sees that the Lord has done 
much, and that He has done much for him. It is 
the atoning Christ, the Christ of Calvary who 
moves our hearts to the profoundest depths and 
converts the world. But also to properly under- 
stand the atoning Christ one must realize who 
and what Christ had been. It is impossible to 



THE KING OF KINGS 199 

estimate what He did for us in His humiliation 
until He is seen in His former exaltation. For 
this sufferer was not man, nor was He an angel. 
A man might have been maltreated like Jesus, but 
his trials would not move us in the same way. 
Peter and Paul suffered, both of them. Both lived 
a lifetime of trial, and both were martyred. Peter 
was crucified and Paul was beheaded. But while 
they stooped to suffer, they did not stoop so low as 
Jesus, for He stooped from heaven. To realize in 
its extent the voluntary suffering of Jesus in our 
behalf it is needful to remember that it was the 
Lord from heaven who stood submissive in the 
judgment hall of Pilate, and that it was the Crea- 
tor of the worlds whom rude soldiers mocked and 
crucified. 

But furthermore, for a clear understanding of 
Jesus the church is to perceive that our Lord's 
humiliation ceased at once from the moment when 
He exclaimed on the cross, "It is finished." Count 
if you will His thirty-four years on the earth, and 
in comparison with the eternities before and after 
it will stand as the merest parenthesis, and of that 
parenthesis His great abasement was for a single 
day. Just for one day men might do with Him as 
they pleased, but when that day was done the 
humiliation was done and He resumed the throne 
of heaven. The prophet Isaiah prophesied of the 
sorrow laden Messiah, but still with Isaiah He was 
the prince in heaven, and the sufferer only here on 
the earth. And yet it is the prince whom Isaiah 
sees mainly, the prince who comes from Edom, 
with dyed garments from Bozrah. He treads the 
winepress alone, and the scarlet stain is upon His 



200 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

apparel. As a prince He is glorious, speaking in 
righteousness, traveling in the greatness of His 
strength. 

And this is the view which John presents, for 
he assumes in the Revelation from first to last the 
present royalty of Jesus. In the opening vision 
Christ walks in the midst of the golden candle- 
sticks, a present ruler and helper to the churches. 
And it is a master like that whom we serve, the 
exalted, the glorified Christ. He occupies now the 
throne of the heavens. Angels now are casting 
their crowns before Him and worshipping at His 
feet. And at this hour He is ruling among the 
nations, working out His plans for the final 
triumph of righteousness. 

Jesus is King of Kings in the glory of His 
transcendent nature. How significant is that ex- 
pression, the duplication of the title, which means 
that He is not merely a king, to rank beside 
rulers and potentates, but King of Kings, out- 
ranking the mightiest of them all. It is well to 
see Him in this position, for there is a kind of 
sturdy republicanism in our blood which inclines 
us to feel, as kings go, that we are about as good 
as the best of them. We happen to know how 
kings are made. Some of the early ones were good 
for something, for they could at least wield a club 
or thrust with a spear. Among the primitive 
tribes it was the strong man who made his way 
to the front. Homer calls Agamemnon king of 
men. We can believe it, for when Schliemann 
uncovered Agamemnon's tomb at Mycenae he 
found from his bones that he was about eight feet 
high, a man of gigantic stature. But as for the 



THE KING OF KINGS 201 

later kings, many of them have been of small ac- 
count. They have owed their eminence to the acci- 
dent of birth or to a revolution. Now and then a 
king happens to be good, like Arthur of the Round 
Table, or Alfred the Great, or Albert of Belgium ; 
but the many have been the scum of the earth like 
Nero and Caligula; imbeciles like the Sluggard 
Kings of France ; votaries of pleasure like the Sec- 
ond Charles of England; butchers of men like 
Tamarlane, and Bonaparte, and William of Hoh- 
enzollern ; or men demented, like that George the 
Third of revolutionary memory. To such rulers 
we may bow from compulsion, but not always 
then. You may recall the valorous act of Alger- 
non Sidney, when he was quartered at the French 
court in the reign of Louis XIV, who was known 
as the Grand Monarch. He was riding with the 
king one day in the hunt, when the king expressed 
his admiration of Sidney's horse, which was the 
finest in all the train. When the sport was over 
Louis sent an officer to ask Sidney the price of his 
horse. Such a royal tender according to custom 
was equivalent to a command, but Sidney, to the 
general surprise, answered that his horse was not 
for sale. But Louis was determined to have the 
animal in the royal stables and so bade his officer 
take a great sum in gold, give it to Sidney, and 
bring back the horse. This might have been sup- 
posed to have ended the matter, but not so at all. 
For Sidney, when he saw that the king would go 
to any length to possess the animal, drew his pistol 
and shot the horse dead. Then he bade the mes- 
senger go back and tell his royal master, "My 
horse was bom a free creature. He has served a 



202 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

free master, and shall not be mastered by a king 
of slaves." 

But the best of all men can serve Christ, for 
whatever our rank or position He still towers far 
above us. Search we may for the noblest souls 
that ever wrought a noble act, or ever engaged in 
a noble enterprise, and they will be the ones who 
are most ready to bow before the name of Jesus. 
A Paul carries the gospel into the centers of 
paganism ; a Polycarp prefers to be burned at the 
stake rather than drop a few grains of incense 
upon an idolatrous altar; a Bunyan spends ten 
years of his precious life in jail for conscience* 
sake ; a Howard devotes his career to ameliorating 
the dismal fate of the prisoner; and all of these 
were true kings and better far than many of their 
day who sat the throne. But Christ transcends 
them all. It is their delight to do His will. Because 
He is matchless in goodness and love, such men are 
ready to exclaim, "Crown Him, Crown Him, 
Crown the Savior King of Kings.'' 

And Christ is King of kings inasmuch as He is 
the arbiter of eternal destiny. What can these 
men be thinking of the life to come, the men who 
are dressed in a little brief authority, and who are 
so puffed with their pride of wealth or station 
that they go driving rough-shod over the rest of 
the world? It is well for them to be thinking of 
it, for the end is close at hand. The grave is gap- 
ing for the king as well as for the beggar. The 
Lord has taught that the new life will disclose 
some strange reversals in position. Here Lazarus 
sat outside the rich man's gate, but over there he 
is to be the bosom friend of Abraham. Here Dives 



THE KING OF KINGS 203 

was rich, and prosperous, and respectable. He 
moved in the highest circles. People of all sorts 
and conditions came to him for counsel. He exer- 
cised the influence that grows out of the power 
to give or to withhold. He sipped the rarest 
wines, he spread the most bountiful table and 
occupied the statliest house in town. But all that 
was on the earth, and when he arrived on the other 
side he was destitute of the riches that were cur- 
rent there, and so he became the beggar. And the 
reversal that the Lord described was so complete, 
that not only had Dives become the beggar, but he 
had to beg of Lazarus. Of a truth that new life 
will record a disturbing come-down for the 
mighty. If ever Constantine, and Charlemagne, 
and the Guises, and the Plantagenets, and the 
Bourbons, and the Hanoverians, and the Hohen- 
zoUerns get to heaven, it will be like ourselves, on 
their knees. Once Christ was sent to Herod, and 
Herod sent Him back to Pilate, but over there 
Christ will be on the throne and Herod must stand 
before Him for judgment. Once Christ was 
arraigned before Pilate, and the politician sur- 
rendered Him to the cross. But Pilate is to stand 
before Jesus; Jesus the Judge, Pilate the sup- 
pliant. There are men and women now who are 
hesitating about accepting the gospel. Their bet- 
ter impulses are urging them to go to Jesus, but 
their worse impulses block the way. Do they 
reflect sufficiently upon the fact that soon the only 
law under which they can live is the one that they 
are holding at arm's length? In heaven the law 
of the land is Christ's gospel. And what is more, 
Christ Himself is the Judge to interpret the law, 



204 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

and He is also the King to enforce that law. It is 
therefore the part of wisdom to submit to that law 
here and now, so that when the new life opens 
those who are hesitating will have thrust aside all 
their procrastinations and may appear as faithful 
friends and loyal subjects of the King. 

But John's thought of Jesus as King of Kings is 
that He is King in His present kingdom, and that 
the supreme ruler of the nations is the teacher who 
was crucified. He presents the view that Christ 
is now present on the earth, present in His church, 
as a comfort to the martyrs, and to encourage the 
faithful to the end of time. He is with us, moving 
in the world with commanding power. Some 
there are who do not understand this, and have 
the idea, because He ascended before the eyes of 
His disciples to heaven, that He is leaving the 
world to its own devices. When Charles I was 
contending with the Long Parliament, and the 
Commons offered him some specially humiliating 
proposition, he replied, ''If I granted your de- 
mands, I should be no more than a mere phantom 
of a king." Our King is no phantom. He exercises 
lordship, and no man or body of men can oppose 
Him effectively. In the Book of Acts is the story 
of a man who was begging at the gate of the tem- 
ple when Peter and John were going up to pray. 
He asked alms of Peter, but Peter was a poor 
preacher and had no money to give, but lacking 
money, he gave the man what was much better. 
Fixing his eyes on the man he said, ''In the Tiame 
of Jesus Christ of Nazareth^ rise up and walkJ' 
And Christ so rules in the world that He granted 



THE KING OF KINGS 205 

power to that man to walk, and he went home 
walking, leaping, and praising God. 

What Jesus did for the man He is doing for 
the world. The history of progress for twenty 
centuries is the history of the progress of the 
Gospel. One may take his map and trace the mis- 
sionary journeys of the apostles, and their suc- 
cessors, and as he follows them from province to 
province he will see the light of life increasing in 
its radiance, happiness more general and more 
assured, liberty developed, and all the arts and 
sciences opening out like the blossoms of the 
Springtide. And these promising results have 
been obtained under the most adverse conditions. 
Governments have lifted the opposing hand, igno- 
rance and vice have united their forces to block 
the way, but the Gospel and civilization have taken 
their forward course, hand in hand ; and the seat 
of the highest civilization has regularly been the 
seat of the purest gospel faith. How shall this 
progress be explained? There is but one explana- 
tion. Christ has been carrying forward His work, 
blessing the ardent desires of His servants, and 
ruling in all as King of heaven, and King of the 
earth no less. 

But Christ is King in a definite kingdom, the 
boundaries of which we can see, and within which 
His voice is dominant and supreme even now. It 
is very noticeable how this idea of Christ's roy- 
alty, and His headship over a kingdom pervades 
the New Testament, which might well be named 
the proclamation of the kingdom. For the proph- 
ecy which the wise men interpreted to Herod's 
dismay declared that Christ was to be bom in 



206 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

Bethlehem as King of the Jews. Three kings of 
the east bowed in the stable before the infant 
Jesus, and offered Him royal gifts, because they 
honored Him as King of the Jews. The Sermon 
on the Mount is an elaborate code of precepts and 
regulations for the government of the kingdom 
which Jesus was come to establish. The Lord 
recited wonderful parables in which He expounded 
the principles of His kingdom. Repeatedly He 
spoke of His kingdom, the kingdom of God and 
the kingdom of heaven. The Jews accused Him 
for calling Himself a king. Over His cross Pilate 
had nailed ^'This is Jesus the King of the Jews^ 
All the epistles are commentaries on the growth 
and the obligations of Christ's kingdom. And the 
Revelation all the way through is a dissertation 
on the conflicts of the kingdom and its ultimate 
triumph. The New Jerusalem, which John sees, 
descending as a bride adorned for her husband, 
is the church, which Paul had spoken of as the 
bride, the Lamb's wife. When men speak as they 
sometimes do with sneers at the church, it would 
seem that they are not familiar with the teaching 
of the New Testament about that same church. 
The New Testament declares the Christ founded 
the church, that He ordained its apostles and 
teachers, that He summoned its membership by 
the voice of the Holy Spirit. When one sees Christ 
living for this kingdom, the church ; dying for this 
kingdom, the church; sealing this kingdom, the 
church, with His own precious blood, it must be 
believed that in the divine counsels, whether men 
see the reason for it or not, the church is a divine 
necessity. 



THE KING OF KINGS 207 

And our King is the master of an exclusive 
kingdom. Christianity is the religion. The 
heathen in the old day complained of this faith 
that it was too aggressive. They were willing to 
offer a niche in their Pantheon for a statue of 
Jesus, or a cross, or any other emblem that the 
Christians might prefer ; but the Christians would 
have none of their Pantheon till the whole place 
was cleared of its idols and consecrated exclusive- 
ly for Christian worship. Here may be found a 
subtle distinction. Christianity teaches tolera- 
tion, that every man shall be permitted to think as 
he pleases, but it is at the same time the most 
intolerant of all religions, for it admits of no com- 
petitor with Jesus. There is no room in a Chris- 
tian church for an idol. The gods of the heathen 
are no gods. There is but one God whom we wor- 
ship, and one Lord Jesus Christ whom we adore. 

But our King reaches out the scepter of His 
favor to all peoples. All who come in penitence 
and faith are to be saved. The path to glory is 
plain so that no man need to err therein. The 
door to the kingdom is open and no man is 
excluded unless he excludes himself. The Bible is 
the guide book which points the way, and whoever 
believes the Book and permits it to lead him to 
Christ will have all the promises and the protec- 
tion of the King of Kings. 

But some man is disinclined to accept this Bible 
and follow this Christ. On what will such a man 
base his hope for the hereafter? Surely not on 
the Bible, for he discards it. Not on, Christ, for 
he turns his back on the Redeemer. On what then 
can he rely? Is it on a supposition and a conjee- 



208 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

ture that somehow or other, though he does not 
imagine how, there may be mercy for the impeni- 
tent? But is not that a doubtful basis of trust, 
a rash experiment? A man is sitting on a barrel 
of gunpowder. Loose grains of the powder are 
strewn over the head of the cask. He scratches a 
match to light his pipe. Rash enough that is, but 
not so rash as to face eternity with no attention 
to the law that Christ has set for His kingdom. 
A man has gone down the face of a precipice by 
a rope on some errand to a ledge below. Presently 
he starts to return, pulling himself up hand over 
hand. Half way up he stops and looks down. Far 
down runs that flush wall of flinty rock, with here 
and there a tiny shrub clinging to some crevice, 
and at the bottom trickles a brooklet like a thread 
of silver gleaming in the sunlight. While still sus- 
pended there, hanging to that rope with one hand, 
with the other he draws a knife and opens out the 
blade with his teeth, and reaching up he cuts one 
strand of the rope. As it gives way it sets him 
swinging. Still reaching up he cuts a second 
strand. Is that a rash experiment? But it is not 
so rash as for a man on the verge of eternity to 
cut off his hold on faith, on the one cord that 
holds strongly and certainly on eternal life. 

The wise man in this matter of the future does 
not desire to rest on ifs and perhaps-es. Rather 
far does he give ear to the word of life in Christ 
Jesus. He will be happy to serve the Master in 
His kingdom, even though it be to take the hum- 
blest seat, so long as he is able to claim Him as 
King and Lord. For who serves Christ now 



THE KING OF KINGS 209 

possesses Him forever. Who follows His stand- 
ards in the conflict marches with Him in the tri- 
umph. Who bows before Him now, He will re- 
ceive and acknowledge in the kingdom of His 
glory. 



CHRIST'S DEMAND ON THIS AGF 



XII. 
CHRIST'S DEMAND ON THIS AGE 

WE are rejoicing in the unquestioned victory 
for democracy. The common people who 
have been neglected through the ages are 
at last coming to their own. The Old World is 
wearing a new face. Of a truth old things are 
passed away. Not merely have thrones by the 
double dozen been toppled over into the abyss, but 
also along with them go antiquated customs, moss- 
grown privileges, and prerogatives, dank and 
mouldy theories of society and government, and 
silly traditions of a by-gone time. 

New names to-day are on the public lip, new 
nations are defiling on the stage of action, the car- 
tographers are busily engraving new maps of 
Middle Europe and the East, new men are coming 
into control of affairs, and new principles are 
guiding in public policy. 

Amid these far-reaching changes the questions 
stare us in the face as to how far we dare consider 
the victory for democracy as a victory for Christ; 
what demands it will make upon the church of 
Christ, and what the prospects are for the king- 
dom as the outgrowth of this splendid victory. 

First of all, since democracy has won its victory, 
we are to infer that its ancient enemy has suffered 
defeat; that autocracy, and the spirit of militar- 
ism, of brute violence, on which autocracy has 



214 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

always leaned as its main support, has been van- 
quished. 

The extent of this memorable defeat is to be 
measured by five decisive counts. The great war 
has been a defeat for Germany in that it carried 
the reversal of a sanguine expectation. For a 
half century the ruling class and the military 
clique of Germany acting together have been occu- 
pied in a premeditated and systematic prepara- 
tion for war. They had turned every interest and 
every resource of the empire, the powers of gov- 
ernment, all social influence, all interests of educa- 
tion, industry, and religion, so that each should 
contribute its full share toward the military prep- 
aration. The whole nation as well as the army 
had been drilled into a state of confident expecta- 
tion that the coming war would be one of victory 
to Germany, and that the pecuniary profit in the 
way of indemnities would be staggering to their 
foes and of immense advantage to the Fatherland. 
France, which they counted as their chief enemy, 
was to be ''bled white." She was to be forced to 
pay a subsidy so huge as to cripple her for gen- 
erations. Just that outcome of the great war was 
contemplated by Germany, and hardljr a voice was 
lifted anywhere in the realm to protest against 
letting loose such an enormity on the world. From 
the Kaiser on the throne down to Kurtz and Klein 
in the rank and file of the army the prospective 
campaign was regarded more in the light of a 
picnic than a war, and when the word was given 
to march, the legions poured forward with joyous 
step and hilarious expectation. Many of the offi- 
cers were wearing their sprucest uniforms, for 



CHRIST'S DEMAND ON THIS AGE 215 

they were sure that the celebration of victory was 
to come soon. Many of the men carried postcards, 
which had been printed in great quantities, an- 
nouncing a victory, on which it was necessary 
only to inscribe the address and the name of the 
writer. Prominent generals had ready at hand the 
list of guests to be invited to the triumphal ban- 
quet which was to be served in Paris within a few 
weeks. But all this glowing picture of success, 
this sanguine expectation of a walk-over was 
beaten to a frazzle at the first battle of the Marne, 
when the German forces were outgeneraled by the 
English and French, and driven back to the banks 
of the Somme, to fight for years against odds 
which were piling up against them with every day 
that the fighting was protracted. Still the Ger- 
man high command continued feeding their peo- 
ple with falsified intelligence, representing every 
slight advance as a great victory, and every 
retreat as a strategical retirement, so that up to 
the very last the German people were trusting that 
their victory was assured. It was defeat for cer- 
tain when Germany discovered that in place of 
receiving indemnities she was to settle for her 
devastations to the full limit of her capacity to 
pay. 

The war was a defeat for Germany from the 
moral aspect, and especially so for the Prussian 
part of the empire, since it revealed the depth of 
their callous wickedness. The military class had 
been declaring new doctrines of war, "Military 
necessity,'' which was excuse for any act however 
horrible that might give a military advantage; 
and "f rightfulness,*' which was interpreted as the 



216 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

merciful measure which would bring about the 
more speedy capitulation of a stubborn enemy. 
In consequence of this barbaric indoctrination 
the leading classes, and then presently the entire 
population became habituated to these abhorrent 
opinions, and suffered a lapse from the moral and 
religious restraints which prevail among civilized 
nations. No such persistent and systematized 
falsification in official documents and in communi- 
cations to the press has been practiced before by 
any nation. The conduct of officers of the German 
army offers examples of the violation of every law, 
international, civil, or divine, including the breach 
of solemn treaties, the wholesale and useless de- 
struction of property, the enslavement of entire 
populations, and the wanton murder of the inno- 
cent and helpless to an extent unparalleled in any 
civilized nation for generations. And what if any- 
thing is still worse, the perpetrators of these 
atrocities were applauded and honored by high 
and low, as if they had been engaged in some hon- 
orable exploit. For her patronage of such atroc- 
ities the conscience of the world has judged Ger- 
many guilty, and generations must elapse before 
the stain on her escutcheon can be erased. 

The war has brought defeat to Germany in the 
puncturing of her over inflated pretensions. In all 
the modern world Germany and Austria have 
stood as the special sponsors for caste and privi- 
lege. In these two nations feudalism, which had 
been modified elsewhere, remained honored and 
enthroned. Imperalism in both lands was exalted 
to the extreme and the royal prerogative and the 
exclusive rights and immunities of the nobility 



CHRIST'S DEMAND ON THIS AGE 217 

were hedged about against the encroachments of 
the commoner by every possible safeguard. The 
prince, the duke, the baron, the count, in Germany 
and Austria were rated as immeasurably superior 
to the commoner, and were supposably above* him 
also in intellectual and moral power. All this we 
know well was pure nonsense and moonshine, but 
the Kaisers and the princes taught it to the com- 
moner as law and gospel, and kept on teaching it 
till they almost believed it themselves. But the 
war has pricked that bubble, and in the titanic 
struggle many a common man proved himself 
stronger, braver, and of better capacity to think 
and accomplish than many a nobleman before 
whom he had been bowing and cringing all his life 
long. 

The war was a defeat for Germany in uncover- 
ing her capacity for fatuous stupidity. This was 
apparent in the planning of the war itself. For the 
notion that Germany was capable of overpower- 
ing all the rest of the world was in itself a stupid 
presumption. And her espousal of the doctrines 
of "military necessity" and of "frightfulness" was 
of the same order. The age had outgrown such 
barbarities. They were in defiance of the divine 
law, and to put them into execution was practic- 
ally to engage in fighting against God. And it is 
ever the fool who lifts his hand against God. But 
the strange and almost unaccountable misreading 
of the mind of other nations, which was practiced 
by German diplomats and statesmen before and 
during the struggle betrays a stolid stupidity 
which belongs in a class by itself. It was the idea 
of Germany that France was decadent, while to 



218 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

the contrary the national spirit was strong. It 
v/as her notion if she spread barbaric devastation 
in Northern France, the France that was left 
would surrender tamely rather than risk enduring 
such a fate, but the result proved that every such 
act of atrocity made France the more resolved to 
win or perish. It was the German idea that Eng- 
land cared more for commercial gain than for her 
treaty obligations, and that English colonies would 
seize the first chance of a war to desert the mother 
country. Germany made a like blunder in her esti- 
mation of America. She imagined that the Ger- 
man-Americans here, of whom we had some twen- 
ty millions, would prevent America from resenting 
her depredations and insults, and that America 
herself would be too busy selling supplies and 
munitions to belligerents to pay any attention to 
German acts of aggression. This mistake was al- 
most of the nature of imbecility. For America did 
resent German aggressions, and German-Ameri- 
cans fought alongside of all sorts of Americans in 
Belgium and France, and German-Americans sub- 
scribed along with other Americans for every 
issue of Liberty Bonds. All these psychological 
misinterpretations by the German publicists were 
among the fatalities that lost them the war, and 
their misinterpretations of America were the most 
fatal of them all. 

The war was a defeat for Germany inasmuch as 
it proved the weakness of her supposedly perfect 
military system. For years Germany had been 
arrogating to herself the position of being the final 
authority in research, in art, in philosophy, in the- 
ology, and in military science. In all these depart- 



CHRIST'S DEMAND ON THIS AGE 219 

ments she posed as supreme and estimated all 
others as sheer pretenders. Her dictum in the in- 
tellectual realm was to be accepted without ques- 
tion, for whatever was under debate she knew it 
all. Some of our preachers who should have known 
better were under the glamour of this influence 
and presented their congregations with explana- 
tions of Holy Scripture that were "made in Ger- 
many.'' And so, many of our educational institu- 
tions were simple enough to accept Germany's 
valuation of herself, and followed blindly in her 
lead in the making up of their educational courses. 
It presently became the general view of a philo- 
sophical or a theological opinion, if it originated in 
Germany, that it must have solid foundation, and 
to oppose it would be to expose one's ignorance 
and incompetency. But the war has exploded this 
notion of German perfections. When England, 
France, and America put their hands to the task, 
they turned out as capable ships, and guns, and 
air ships, and sailors, and soldiers as any that 
Germany could muster ; and so much better than 
Germany could muster, that the German High 
Command a year before the crash came saw the 
handwriting on the wall. They realized that their 
boasted system after all was inferior to that of 
the Allies, and that no hope was left for them in 
their long range guns, or their Hindenburg lines, 
and that they must search for some easy means 
of pacification. And so they made an approach 
to President Wilson to interpose in their behalf. 
But they did not make their overture man fashion, 
but secretly and under cover, so that if it hap- 
pened to be turned down they could deny having 



220 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

made any such overture. Of course such an un- 
derhanded maneuvre was rejected, as it richly 
deserved, and they had to continue their fighting. 
But finally they could not conceal their dire condi- 
tion from the rank and file of their army, and this 
time they besought an armistice in the approved 
manner and their pleas were granted. And so they 
marched out of Belgium and France cowed, humil- 
iated, defeated, and with their soldiery sometimes 
reckless and rebellious. And Germany, which had 
been befogged all these years by systematic falsifi- 
cation, was stunned by this stroke as if she had 
been smitten by a thunderbolt from a clear sky. 
And to this hour there are many of the German 
people who refuse to acknowledge that they were 
defeated in the field, and they plaintively assure 
us that they finally yielded in their merciful desire 
to prevent further destruction of cities and effu- 
sion of blood. 

This great victory brings us release from the 
long nightmare of strife and confusion, and par- 
ticularly from the dread of enslavement which 
men and nations must suffer had Germany been 
successful in her ambitious enterprise. All 
through the tedious struggle, till the decisive mo- 
ment arrived, thoughtful men were asking what 
might happen were Germany to win. Some things 
might be predicted, were such a deplorable event 
to occur. Could she have won she would have been 
master of Central Europe and of the far east. In 
a short time she would have had under her con- 
trol material for making an army of a hundred 
million men, by whose might she would have had 
the world at her feet. That would have meant 



CHRIST'S DEMAND ON THIS AGE 221 

nothing less than practical enslavement for alL 
She would have wrung a tribute from the free 
nations that would have impoverished them. One 
has only to recall what happened in Brussels and 
Antwerp to realize what would have happened in 
Paris, in London, and in New York, could the 
Kaiser have planted there his conquering foot. 
From such a calamity to freedom God in His 
mercy has spared us. But there is much more than 
that in this victory. Nations which have long 
groaned under the heel of feudalism can now draw 
a long breath without applying for permission to 
the police or to the throne. It has also brought 
the dismissal of a degrading prejudice. In many 
countries the common man has been just a com- 
mon man and nothing more. Those above him 
have despised him and crowded him down. They 
were kinder to a pet dog than to the shopkeeper, 
the saddler, or the man who tilled the soil. The 
man at the bottom, cowed by the superciliousness 
of his "betters,'' came at length to be what they 
thought him. But now along with the thrones 
that have vanished the old idea has gone also. A 
new manhood is springing to life all through Cen- 
tral Europe and a new sense of freedom. The 
victory has demolished the barriers of caste, bar- 
riers which have been the curse of the old order. 
Those grades of nobility, so-called, ennobled the 
few, but at the expense of the many, whom they 
debased. They separated rank from rank, and 
cultivated the traits of snobbish exclusiveness, 
arrogance, violence, and contempt toward all in a 
lower walk, and at the same time bred a fawning 
servility and a cringing subjection in the higher 



222 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

class toward those above them, all of which de- 
tract from the character of freemen. As it has 
been, class has been segregated from class, and 
even the children in Germany have been partition- 
ed off into four different classes of schools, each of 
them accepting only such and such social grades, 
the members of which might not sit in the same 
classes with those from the other class of schools, 
nor to play with such in the same playground. 
Artificial divisions like this do not consort with 
the free air of our age, and the victory of democ- 
racy is rapidly making them obsolete. 

The victory also opens wide the door of oppor- 
tunity which in the countries we have been speak- 
ing of have been barred close and strictly guarded 
against the intrusion of the common man. The 
lower classes in these countries have been crowded 
into their own place, sometimes by long standing 
custom, sometimes by violence. The peasant has 
been obliged to remain a peasant, the artisan to 
stick to his own trade, and none of these could by 
any chance secure a commission in the army, 
which was held to be the exclusive privilege of 
noble blood. Up to within a few years any Aus- 
trian or German of the lower class, if he wished 
to rise in the world, was compelled to emigrate to 
some other country, preferably to America; for 
America it is that smiles upon the ambitious 
spirit, and lends him a hand instead of crowding 
him down. The victory in this sense was a boon 
to the struggling classes. The four years of war- 
fare has been an education to many a man. Some 
of venturesome spirit have dared strongly, and in 
emergency have attained successes that have 



CHRIST'S DEMAND ON THIS AGE 223 

brought awakened intelligence. As a result there 
are many who are nursing hopes and aspirations 
in whom all thought had seemed to be dead. 

As the great victory is interpreted in this man- 
ner it will be observed to have a special bearing 
and significance on the church of Christ. It gives 
to the church an instructive lesson. This lesson 
will be in part a warning. Because old things are 
passed away and all things are become new, the 
church must meet the issues of the new time. We 
are undergoing a general course of reconstruction, 
in social life and in governmental relations. It is 
impossible then for us to imagine that the Divine 
Powers will be content to let the church jog along 
contentedly in the old-time way. 

Coupled with the warning comes the call to 
action. The first word in the Great Commission 
is Go ! And it is the imperative word, since there 
could be no discipling the nations if all the church 
were to sit in idleness at home. In this new age 
the church is to be alive and doing, alert for the 
immediate duty and eager to make every factor 
tell for the progress of the kingdom. 

The victory brings us face to face with several 
imperative demands. 

To begin with, the church must arouse herself 
from her narrow parochialism and lay out a sub- 
stantial world program. Can it be true, as some 
allege, that we have been lingering in a state of 
sanctimonious pettiness? Can it be true that we 
have been thinking in terms of the neighborhood 
and the parish, and that we have been satisfied 
with keeping the street of morality clean before 
our own door? It is much to do that, to live 



224 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

plainly and purely, to keep one's personal char- 
acter stainless and our conduct a stimulating ex- 
ample to others, to have the congregation active 
in good works, the Sunday School a real school 
with modern methods and equipment, to have the 
meetings for social worship interesting and inspir- 
ing, and all connected with the place so breezy and 
cheerful as to make it a constant delight to be 
there. And to be that happy and prosperous and 
helpful to the life of the community has completed 
the anxious desire of many a faithful pastor and 
his devoted people. But that measure will not 
suffice for this new age. The war has forced us 
out of the old isolation and compels the wider 
view. We have had to provide for the physical 
and moral welfare of the soldier boys in the camps 
at home and in the trenches abroad. We have had 
our share in saving the starving populations of 
Belgium, Armenia, and Roumania. We have par- 
ticipated as far as we were permitted in the Peace 
Council at Versailles, and have followed the devel- 
opment of discussions which have involved the 
future of newly born nations with anxions solici- 
tude. And after having been engaged thus for 
years in fighting for a world-wide democracy and 
in arranging for the settlement of world-wide 
problems, Americans and the American church 
can never get back into the old, narrow way. We 
are the part of a vast and world-wide movement. 
Our responsibility henceforth has the world-wide 
perspective. Our program must be drawn to the 
broad, the world-wide scale. 

The victory will demand that our world-wide 
program be devoted to measures that are practical 



CHRIST'S DEMAND ON THIS AGE 225 

in preference to those that are purely theological 
and theoretical. The experience of the war made 
this clear in the most emphatic way. So long as we 
lialted to debate the ways and means, as to how 
we should fight and who should command this sec- 
tor and that, our campaign went haltingly and the 
advantage lay with the enemy. But when stern 
necessity impelled us to the saner mood we pooled 
all our resources, unified our armies under a 
single command, dropped the foolishness of debate 
and discussion, and concentrated all thought and 
action to moving upon the enemy's works. Then 
it was from July to October that something defi- 
nite was accomplished. Every day there was 
advance somewhere, and when the foe was watch- 
ing for the moment that we would halt to catch our 
breath we were driving him out of his defences 
and forcing him to make his masterly strategic 
movement in the direction of Berlin. There we 
have the example for the church of to-day. We 
have no time now to waste over questions of cere- 
mony and ritual ; no time to waste over questions 
whether a deacon shall be elected to serve for one 
year or for a lifetime ; no time to waste over insig- 
nificant matters of any sort. The one pressing 
and immediate question is to find our place and 
work in the Lord's army, the one immediate and 
important thing which the Lord intrusts to our 
hands ; and having found it, to do just that with 
all our might and main, and to do it now. 

Our victory demands that we assemble and put 
to best use all our unused forces and resources. 
The war gave us that lesson also. We Americans 
have been the most prodigal people on the face of 



226 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

the earth. It has been told of us on both sides of 
the water that a French mother could feed her 
whole family on what the American mother 
throws to the pigs. Of course that is an exaggera- 
tion, but it carries a semblance of truth. And we 
have been just as wasteful as that with the dis- 
carded material of transportation and of warfare. 
But along in the course of the war, when food was 
falling short and there was not shipping enough 
left on the surface of the sea to meet the demands 
for cargo space, we undertook at once a systematic 
campaign of reclamation. Wherever we had any 
iron to scrap over there we collected it and sent 
it to French foundries to be recast into shells and 
guns. Discarded uniforms were overhauled, and 
what was saved out of two or three suits was made 
over into one. Old shoes were cobbled and made 
better than new. In that way our armies were 
trained in economy and thrift. But do we realize 
how much material has been lying unused or going 
to waste in the Lord's kingdom? In many 
churches the main burden has been carried by a 
faithful few, while the many, able men and 
women, have fulfilled their religious responsibility 
by paying their pew rent and getting out to church 
when the weather was suitable, or it was other- 
wise convenient. It is a fair estimate that less 
than twenty per cent, of our church membership 
has been really active, and that over eighty per 
cent, has been watching to see how well the others 
could work. The new age demands that these 
unused forces be mobilized, and that intelligent 
leadership shall plan judiciously for bringing 
them into action. 



CHRIST^S DEMAND ON THIS AGE 227 

The victory demands of the church that her 
activities be unified constructively. This is far 
from saying that we should have at once organic 
union for the whole church, of Protestants, Greek 
Catholics and Roman Catholics. Recently a dele- 
gation of enthusiastic Protestants paid a visit to 
the pope to tender him a proposition for Christian 
union. It is reported that he lent them a willing 
ear. He believes in the reunion of all Christen- 
dom, and he was kind enough to point out to the 
delegation that the simple and effective way to 
fulfil their desire was for all the schismatic and 
disunited brethren to return to the welcoming 
bosom of the mother church. It is to be expected, 
however, that the mother church will find it neces- 
sary to let down several lofty bars before that 
mellifluous invitation can meet with general 
acceptance. And there are also many barriers 
which obstruct the organic union of many of the 
Protestant bodies, which are now working togeth- 
er amicably in many departments of Christian 
service. And other ways are offered in which our 
forces may be unified. During the war British, 
French, Italian, and American forces fought side 
by side. The British were responsible to British 
generals, the French to their French generals, and 
the Americans to American generals, but these 
obligations of national allegiance did not hinder 
their complete co-operation in pursuit of their 
objective. And in the church co-operation, intelli- 
gent and fraternal co-operation should be the 
watchword. In the Cleveland Convention of the 
Federal Council of Churches, 1919, Dr. Hubert 
Herring, in the course of his magnificent address, 



228 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

scored what he termed ''our ragged sectarianism." 
He was alluding to our denominational divisions 
and rivalries and over-lappings, and the conse- 
quent waste of men and resources. And indeed 
our losses in this manner have been incalculable. 
When we forget our differences and labor side by- 
side as the Lord's servants under command of the 
one Lord and Savior, we shall find more results 
for our efforts and more joy in our chosen tasks. 
Our victory demands that we make adequate 
provision in resources and men for our common 
enterprise, which, as has been seen, is of world- 
wide extent. Europe is now calling for construc- 
tive Christian teaching. China, Japan, the entire 
far east, all of them are lifting up the Macedonian 
cry. To meet the demand there must be ample 
supply. For this the old-fashioned penny collec- 
tion will not suffice. The objective which con- 
fronts the church is colossal. The sums needed 
for education, for missions, for relief, for estab- 
lishing new churches, for the sustentation of 
retired ministers, for the inculcation of sane 
notions of civil government rise into the millions 
and the billions. And far-sighted leaders are ask- 
ing for vast sums, not with hesitation or doubt, 
but with the full assurance that the American 
heart and the American purse will furnish what 
the work requires. Here again the war has been 
our teacher. We have asked and obtained millions 
for the starving in lands that were overrun by 
the foe. So we raised millions more for the Salva- 
tion Army, the Knights of Columbus and the 
Young Men's Christian Association. And then 
we raised millions and billions for the successive 



CHRIST'S DEMAND ON THIS AGE 229 

Liberty Loans. Never before in the world was 
money contributed in such enormous amounts or 
collected with such marvelous ease. And the bulk 
of it came from the purse of the people. It was 
announced that there were fifteen million individ- 
ual subscribers for the last Victory Loan. So it is 
not to be doubted that the funds which the church 
is asking for will be supplied. It is needful only 
to employ the same tact, energy, and team work 
in the Lord's service that we gave to the secular 
drives to have the Lord's treasury filled to over- 
flowing. 

The victory offers to the church a most encour- 
aging prospect. The war has provided a wonder- 
ful preparation of the field. Such plowing, such 
harrowing, such stump-pulling by wholesale has 
not been known before in the modern world. 
Allusion has been made to the astonishing changes 
that have befallen the nations. All through 
Europe, not merely in the lands that were domi- 
nated by the Central Powers, but everywhere, 
there has been awakening. The people every- 
where are coming to their own. Under the mon- 
archical system they were crushed to the earth. 
We know, however, that in Christ we had the true 
teacher of democracy, and we know also that the 
entire monarchical system was opposed to the 
principle of brotherhood and equality before the 
law that proceeds from the Christian idea, when 
properly interpreted. Now the multitudes whohave 
lost their kings and their kinglets stand dazed 
as if they had been born suddenly into a new 
world. They have been born into a new world. 
The brightness of the new day dazzles their eyes. 



230 CHRIST IN WORD AND WORK 

and the mass of novel ideas confuses their under- 
standing. It is at this critical juncture that all 
these peoples should be instructed wisely and tact- 
fully. They need to have the real Christ inter- 
preted to them, and the time for the work is not 
a thousand years off, but here and now. If they 
are neglected now, they stand in grave peril of 
being victimized by unholy teachers and corrupted 
by seditious and anti-Christian notions, which 
might result in their being so misled as to become 
enemies of a true church and a Christian state. 

To help in our new world work we have pros- 
pective forces right to our hand. We had two 
million men in France and two million more in 
camps here at home. We have been asking what 
effect camp and army life has had upon these four 
million of our young men. Now it is commonly 
conceded that they have been profited immensely 
in their physical life by their training and their 
regularity of living. They have gained in carri- 
age, in poise, and in self-control. Any person 
who remembers any particular detachment as it 
first went into camp, and compares the bearing 
of the same detachment as it came marching home 
with the former memory, will have seen the 
marked improvement. But besides they have 
profited intellectually. Their trip abroad has been 
an education in itself, but beside that many of the 
men have been enrolled in the soldier's schools, 
where they have had instruction under the ablest 
teachers. But still more, it is reported that these 
young men have gained much in spiritual percep- 
tion and in religious devotion. We have more than 
mere rumor for this last statement, for a careful 



CHRIST'S DEMAND ON THIS AGE 231 

survey of a leading camp affords us actual ques- 
tions and answers given by the men themselves. 
In those answers the men declare that they have 
been improving, and seventy-five per cent, state 
that the army life has improved their morals, and 
seventy per cent, state that their religious life has 
been deepened and confirmed. When these men re- 
turn to their home churches they will bring a fresh 
inspiration, and from among them it is to be 
hoped that we shall obtain valuable recruits for 
the Lord's army, both for the home field and for 
the work in other lands. 

So we are warranted in welcoming the new day, 
and from the victories already registered for the 
world's peace and prosperity, we may move for- 
ward to greater victories for the kingdom and the 
name of the blessed Immanuel. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: July 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 160B& 
(724) 779-21 1 1 



